Eurasia

Russian disinformation has led a blitzkrieg over the West, and the implications are grave. Germany witnessed the scandal of “Lisa,” France saw false claims of Saudi Arabian financing for President Macron’s campaign, Norway was accused of stealing children...

In 2016, twenty-five years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, 52 newborns in Latvia became former citizens of a country that no longer exists. They are Latvia’s “non-citizens”—a stop-gap status designed for people who moved to Latvia during...

“There are three hundred million of us,” people in Montenegro once boasted. “Together with the Russians,” they would hasten to add. The tiny state, tucked between the Adriatic Sea and the Dinaric Alps and whose population is a little...

Having not yet cooled off from the 2016 presidential election, the Republic of Moldova now faces preparations for its upcoming parliamentary elections in 2018. Moldova’s main political entities, in both rhetoric and behavior, have been overwhelmingly absorbed by narrow,...

Russia’s relations with North Korea are often ignored in the West. The conventional view is that Russia’s role with respect to the North is purely political and diplomatic, predicated on Russia’s permanent membership in the UN Security Council. Often...

Since 2006, the Baltic states have hosted two major annual conferences on defense and security: the Annual Baltic Conference on Defense (ABCD) and its larger sibling, the Riga Conference. These flagship conferences present the cutting edge of Baltic thought...

Democracy is under siege globally. The number of democracies spiked impressively after the fall of the Soviet empire in 1989-91. But over the past decade, the quality of democracy has fallen in more states than it has risen. Our...

“The greatest propagandist of Moldova pretends to be the great propaganda fighter,” remarked Maia Sandu, the pro-European leader of the Action and Solidarity Party, about Vladimir Plahotniuc’s recent legislative initiative. In June 2017, Plahotniuc, the chairman of Moldova’s Democratic...

As Ukraine’s recent economic difficulties persist—the country registered a modest growth rate of 2.3% in 2016, and painful IMF-mandated reforms continue to progress slowly—optimistic commentators forecast an increase—and eventual surge—in Chinese investment in the country. Speculation has been driven...