Black Sea

Many Western scholars studying Russia and policymakers dealing with Russia have long found it an exhausting and bewildering endeavor. Winston Churchill famously described it in 1939 as “a riddle wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” More recently, Bobo...

Long before the Kerch Strait incident in October 2018, Russia had already begun to strengthen the forces in its Southern Military District, which spans from near Volgograd to Russia’s border with Georgia and Azerbaijan. Naturally, that has caused concern...

As Ukraine’s March 2019 presidential election nears, the Kremlin has not masked its interest in the outcome. Indeed, in November, nearly five years after Kyiv sanctioned Russia for the annexation of Crimea, Moscow finally decided to respond with retaliatory...

No real honor or glory accrues to those who after the fact resurrect past predictions, but the ascension to global fame of fighters from the tiny Russian region of the North Caucasus is one that I anticipated in 1990....

The People’s Republic of China is actively engaging Black Sea littoral states through various initiatives to open new markets for Chinese goods, facilitate the acquisition of valuable or strategic local industries, and offer loans for large development projects. These...

On November 25, Russian border service patrol boats opened fire on two Ukrainian navy gunboats and rammed a Ukrainian tugboat as they attempted to transit through the Kerch Strait from the Black Sea into the Sea of Azov, a...

On October 28, Georgia held a presidential election that is now set to have a runoff. The Georgian Dream (GD), the governing party, supported independent candidate Salome Zurabishvili, who received 38.63% of the vote, while the United National Movement’s...

The 2008 war between Russia and Georgia shocked most of the world but was quickly overshadowed by other events. The 2008 financial crisis, which began around the same time, seized the attention of governments as they tried to...

Since 1945, the United States has promoted European economic, political, and energy integration, and one recent way it has promoted these goals is by supporting the Three Seas Summit and Business Forum, which took place in Bucharest, Romania, on...