Black Sea

China Continues to Deepen its Political Influence in Georgia

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili’s recent visit to China and his meeting with President Xi Jinping heralded the establishment of a strategic partnership between China and Georgia. Garibashvili called his visit historic. Moreover, he expressed Tbilisi’s willingness to deepen its relationship with Beijing and support all...

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The Vilnius NATO Summit Brings Opportunities for Closer Nordic-Baltic Integration

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) heads of state and government participated in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Vilnius, Lithuania, in July — the fourth summit the Alliance has held since the full scale Russian invasion...

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Wagner’s Head is Dead, Now Bury the Body

Yevgeny Prigozhin is presumed dead in a plane crash, alongside Wagner Group’s co-founder and operational commander, Dmitry Utkin. They leave behind a business empire and thousands of security contractors in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The Kremlin has...

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Nuclear Stability and Escalation Risks in Europe

  Introduction The security situation in Europe has changed dramatically following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and President Vladimir Putin’s repeated threats to use nuclear weapons if the conflict were to escalate. The Foreign Policy Research Institute convened a Track...

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Biden’s Bombs: The Dance of Ethics and Interests

On July 7, 2023, at the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky, operators carefully placed an M55 rocket filled with nerve agent onto a machine that drained and neutralized the deadly material. America destroyed its last chemical weapon—the final...

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Prigozhin’s Death and the Future of Putin’s Rule

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...

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Russian Disinformation in Africa: No Door on this Barn

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...

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Fighting to Win: Ukraine, Russia, and the War for Survival

  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...

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The Folly of Merging the Indo-Pacific and Europe

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...

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Wagner Group Licks its Wounds in Belarus

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...

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