Black Sea

Editor’s Note: The head of Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, is presumed dead as a result of a plane crash on August 23. Below, FPRI experts examine what the controversial mercenary boss’s death means for Russia, Putin, and the war...

In 2018, Yale scholar Timothy Snyder called Russian information operations in the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, “the most sophisticated propaganda campaign in the history of warfare.” Likewise, recent advances of Russian disinformation in Africa have resulted in some...

  Download PDF Introduction  I arrived in Kyiv this July after a thirteen-hour overnight train ride in a clean but austere Soviet-era railway car. Since I couldn’t purchase a return ticket in Poland, immediately upon arrival at the train...

In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the United States has embarked upon an ambitious endeavor: containing its two most powerful rivals, China and Russia, at the same time. Central to this strategy is the imperative of...

Most analysts have labeled Yevgeny Prigozhin’s attempted rebellion and the Wagner Group mutiny a failure. And in many ways, that’s true. Indeed, Prigozhin and the contingent of Wagner fighters that eschewed signing contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defence...

Twice this week, drones attacked a building housing government ministries in Moscow. The Kremlin immediately blamed Ukraine. Ukrainian officials remained coy, not directly claiming responsibility for the strikes but noting that Moscow “is rapidly getting used to a full-fledged...

  Introduction The recent mutiny by Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary force, generated international concern about the control of Russian nuclear weapons and Russia’s future nuclear policy. Therefore we must ask, will Russia change its nuclear policy...

In the 2010s, the global landscape changed. The Arab Spring, the Russian occupation of Crimea, and China’s national security law in Hong Kong were indicative of a profound change in the global system. The era of the unipolar moment,...

  The following is an edited transcript of a live recording of FPRI’s Chain Reaction podcast from the Changing Tides in the Black Sea conference, June 29, 2023. Listen to the recording here.  Recordings of all six panel discussions...

After bulldozing trucks and shooting down government aircraft, Wagner Group’s columns, which had been advancing northward from Rostov, stalled out miles from Moscow. Their leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, had come to an agreement with the Russian government. Belarusian President Aliaksandr...