It is widely believed in the West that Russian president Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine was not a rational act. On the eve of the invasion, then British prime minister Boris Johnson suggested that perhaps the United States and its allies had not done “enough to deter an irrational …

In December 2022, Time magazine named the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky its Person of the Year. The reasons seemed obvious: When Russia invaded in February of that year, few thought that Ukraine would survive more than a week, or that its president would remain at his post in Kyiv. But …

The Armenian separatist forces in Nagorno-Karabakh on Wednesday agreed to lay down their weapons following Azerbaijan’s lightning offensive in the Armenian-majority enclave. Between Moscow’s weakening position in the Caucasus and the West’s dependence on hydrocarbons, Azerbaijan has taken advantage of a favourable international context to complete a decades-long mission to …

Despite its regulatory and market power, the EU does not live up to its foreign policy potential. Its ability to exert influence largely depends on member states’ political dynamics and appetite for further integration. Lizza Bomassi – Deputy director of Carnegie Europe Yes, it can, and it certainly has the …

By refusing to openly condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, G20 leaders exposed the divisions in and limits of multilateral institutions. Russia and China are the beneficiaries. They worked well after 1945, when so many countries were trying to recover from the destruction wreaked by World War II. The United States …

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has hardly changed the foreign-policy mindset in Berlin. Only a robust, long-term containment strategy can help the West curb Russia’s expansionist ambitions. Has Russia’s war against Ukraine fundamentally changed the thinking of policymakers in Berlin? Have they really understood that in the future European security must …

Russia’s ultra-patriots are not a cohesive force. They are a motley collection of amateur groups that coalesce around leaders who are ambitious, jealous, and incapable of working with each other.The late mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was until recently considered a leading Russian politician—with some even believing he could be a …

In the absence of foreign investors, lucrative assets in Russia can be given for safekeeping to anyone who is “one of us.” Those people will owe their wealth to Putin personally, making them directly dependent on the Kremlin to preserve that wealth.Russia’s elites are unhappy about many things, not least …

As Russia’s relationship with the West has deteriorated, the Kremlin’s view of the Taliban has changed. But substantive economic cooperation will be hard to achieve.Russia is one of just a handful of states in the world actively seeking to strengthen its relationship with the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. While Afghanistan’s …

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has, or has had, ties to 143 school districts in the United States, including 20 near military bases, through its “Confucius Classrooms,” according to a recent report, “Little Red Classrooms: China’s Infiltration of American K-12 Schools” by Parents Defending Education (PDE), a grassroots organization. Attention …