Section: Intersection (EU)
Ceasefire for the sake of war
Security On December 30, 2016, shortly after the bloody assault on eastern Aleppo, a nationwide ceasefire was established between the Assadites and the opposition. Russia and Turkey are guarantors of the truce. Conflict resolution talks due to be held in late January 2017 in Astana were announced on the same day. Russia, Turkey and Iran will all...
Does Trump have allies for getting closer to Russia?
Russia / World The Russian political and expert community was encouraged by Donald Trump’s victory in the American presidential election. Many analysts point out that he will conduct pragmatic foreign policy, which involves cooperation with Moscow. It does not seem that in Russian leadership there are people who believe Trump will be able...
Trump is not the America
Russia / World While following the ongoing worldwide reaction to the “Russian influence” on the American elections, I recall a friend from my student years. He always preferred not to walk the couple of hundred metres from the University metro station to the second humanities faculty department building, and would wait for a bus or trolleybus –...
Trump, sanctions, Congress: business or principles?
Russia / World On January 1, U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar, Lindsey Graham, and John McCain called for new sanctions on Russia – even in the aftermath of President Barack Obama’s expulsion of 35 ‘diplomats’ – only metres from the border with Georgia’s de facto Russian-occupied breakaway region of South Ossetia. On January 10, ten...
A collapse that did not happen
Politics If we look at assessments published by renowned experts about Russia back in early 2015, we would most likely question the validity and bias of the prognosis made two years ago. After 2014, with the aggression against Ukraine, “isolation of Russia”, significant drop in oil prices, and the crash of ruble in December, it seemed as though...
Do the Russians want a hybrid war in the Balkans?
Russia / Europe Given the crisis in relations between Russia, the European Union, and United States – i.e. key partners and donors in the region – Russia’s attempts to enhance its influence in the Balkans are a bone of contention. Concerns raised by political leaders like former Prime Minister of Montenegro Milo Djukanovic,...
Rosneft Privatization: Reality or Fraud?
Economy On December 7, the Russian official news agency TASS reported that press secretary of the President Dmitry Peskov said that 19.5% shares of Rosneft had been sold to “a consortium of Glencore and Qatar’s sovereign fund.” Sechin claimed: “This amounts to over 1 trillion rubles, which will come to the budget, including 10.5...
Russia’s Southeast Asia dilemma
Security Driven by declining prospects in Europe and a threatening American ‘pivot’ to Asia, Russia resolved to begin its own turn east in 2012. Assessments have not been kind, dubbing Russia’s eastward course “a pivot to nowhere” and “another opportunity lost.” Faced with growing evidence of its limited appeal as an economic partner,...
Nations of the post-Soviet space: 25 years apart
Russia / World Over the course of the last couple of months a number of articles devoted to the 25th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union have been written. Both in Russian and western presses, experts conclude that events which started a quarter of century ago with the collapse of the “Last Empire” are still ongoing. Indeed, in 2016...
Memory traps
Society The original aim of this article was to provide a brief overview of how the majority of Russians interpret the collapse of the Soviet Union which happened twenty five years ago, however, results of surveys conducted regularly by the Levada Center indicate that Russian citizens lack an understanding of what actually happened all those...
