Black Sea

On 3 October, the Russian government announced that legislation was introduced into the State Duma to suspend a 2000 agreement with the United States for the disposition of equal quantities of weapon-grade plutonium from their respective stockpiles....

Bidzina Ivanishvili of the Georgian Dream coalition and Misha Saakashvili of the United National Movement are two large-than-life figures in Georgian politics. The 2016 Georgian parliamentary elections on October 8 will answer the question of which party's message...

The National InterestMoscow just can’t catch a break. Last month, the Kremlin was shifting the discussion on Ukraine away from Russia’s involvement towards Ukraine’s noncompliance with the Minsk Accords, and preliminary discussions were underway among European Union ministers to...

World Politics Review Following meetings with Ukrainian officials in Kiev early this month, the vice president of the European Commission, Maros Sefcovic, who holds the energy portfolio for the EU as a whole, laid out his vision for how...

Foreign Affairs When Georgians go to the polls for parliamentary elections on October 8, they will have the luxury of choosing between candidates and parties that represent a real array of ideologies and visions: liberals, conservatives, Westernizers, Russia accommodationists,...

Transnistria, or the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR), exists unsure of its place in the world. To its west, across the Dniester River, lies the breakaway region’s parent state, Moldova, and, beyond that, European Union (EU) member Romania. To the...

The intent of Russian strategic deception is to alter a target population's perception of reality in the interest of advancing some strategic objective or set of objectives. One Russian deception technique is disinformation, which includes intentionally misrepresenting events. Strategic...

The number of conflicts is again on the rise as both states and violent actors contend for influence and seek to establish their position. Contrary to optimistic depictions of the present international system, there are powers seeking to alter...

Gagauzia, known formally as the Republic of Moldova’s Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauzia, is of little consequence economically or otherwise, save one thing: it sits by historical accident atop a geopolitical fracture line where Russian, Turkish and Western geopolitical...

New Atlanticist  On July 7, 2014, Russian-backed separatists entered Donetsk and occupied four dormitories at Donetsk National University; armed gunmen expelled students from their rooms in the middle of the night. Nine days later, the separatists seized the entire...