Eurasia

A year has passed since Russia escalated its war against Ukraine to a full-scale invasion. When writing about the first Latvian reactions to the Russian attack, we noted the geographical proximity with both aggressor and victim made Latvians feel...

China has struggled to gain support from its Central Asian neighbors to build the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan (CKU) railway since the 1990s. The CKU railway is crucial to China for two interconnected purposes—to advance its geopolitical interests and to secure favorable...

Americans tend to view ideology with suspicion. In fact, one scholar proclaimed that ideology had “ended.” Despite this dismissiveness, ideology keeps coming back in political discourse on both sides of the Atlantic. Moreover, recent advances in political psychology have...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has long seen Central Asia as Russia’s “most stable region.” He has regularly exerted influence and political pressure over its leaders. However, after decades of stability, the last year has seen Russia’s influence in Central...

  After Russia’s February 24, 2022, re-invasion of Ukraine, all eyes turned to the brutal spectacle of Europe’s largest war since 1945. Yet, Russia’s ill-fated attempt to assert its sphere of influence in Europe has not been confined to...

The decision by Western countries to send tanks to Ukraine is a welcome one, but tanks—at least in their current numbers—will not change the course of the war. Nevertheless, the decision represents increasing Western confidence in Ukraine, and an...

Who, what, and where is Wagner Group today? Once a Kremlin asset used exclusively in Africa and Syria, the mercenary group redeployed most of its forces to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Wagner Group has changed irrevocably since the...

As the Russian-Ukrainian War enters the winter, Ukrainians have reason to be cautiously optimistic about the course of the war. Following a strategic offensive at the end of August in multiple regions, Ukrainian forces have retaken nearly all of...

  Will Russia survive until 2084? Readers may recognize the query as an allusion to Andrei Amalrik’s historic 1969 essay, “Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?,” which itself was an allusion to Orwell’s famed novel. As with Amalrik’s...

On Dec. 1, Aleksey Korostelyov, the host of Russian opposition TV channel Dozhd (TV Rain) broadcasting from the Latvian capital Riga invited his viewers to share testimonies about Russia’s mobilization process and problems in the Russian army. At the...