Eurasia

A Growing Rift: The Decline of Russian-Central Asian Ties

Executive Summary A small group of Russian nationalists has been calling to “reclaim” Russia’s colonial territories since the Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991. After the Kremlin finally acted on these aspirations by invading parts of Ukraine, the number...

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Bulgaria’s Difficult Road to Political Stability      

As many in Central and Eastern Europe were emerging from the buoyant aftermath of Hungary’s mid-April 2026 elections, less than 500 miles southeast of Budapest another consequential national plebiscite transpired. On April 19, a mere week after the watershed...

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Reordering Central Asia: China’s Emerging Economic Hierarchy

Introduction For much of the post–Cold War period, Central Asia was framed as a space of Sino-Russian coordination, institutionalized through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and underwritten by a tacit division of labor: Russia provided security, and China delivered...

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Shifting Power Dynamics in Kyrgyzstan: The End of the Japarov-Tashiyev Era

 Introduction Kyrgyzstan was once viewed as the “island of democracy “in Central Asia. That changed in the last five years due to the tandem of President Sadyr Japarov and head of the State Committee for National Security (GKNB) Kamchybek...

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Hungarian Elections: Ramifications for Central Europe

As the dust settles and the euphoria ebbs on the historic mid-April 2026 elections in Hungary, the consequences of Tisza’s resounding victory over Victor Orban’s Fidesz party will start to manifest to the north of Budapest, specifically in Poland,...

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Russia’s Drone Line Experiment

The following analysis was originally published on Two Marines, a newsletter on Russia’s war in Ukraine, defense technology, and modern warfare, on April 3, 2026.  During 2025, the Russian military continued to experiment with improving its employment of uncrewed...

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Experts React | Effects of the Iran War on Energy Markets

Emily Holland, Eurasia Program Director With the world still reeling from the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which approximately one fifth of global oil is shipped, Iran’s ballistic missile attacks on Qatar’s LNG infrastructure have sent...

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From Tehran to Donbas: What the Iran War Means for Russia and Ukraine

The sudden outbreak of war in in Iran has snapped the world’s attention away from Eastern Europe toward the Persian Gulf and wider Middle East. Yet for Ukraine, the implications of this new conflict are anything but peripheral. The...

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Czech President, New Government in Early Power Struggle

In an interview on Feb. 1, 2026 on the popular Czech television political commentary series “Questions with Vaclav Moravec,” Petr Macinka, the Czech foreign minister and head of the government’s junior coalition party Motorists for Themselves (Motoristé sobě), declared...

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Latvia at the UN Security Council

In the Shadow of War and the Threat of International Law Starting in 2026, Latvia will serve as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council (UNSC) for a two-year term. This will be a first in the country’s...

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