President Vladimir Putin says any country that launches a nuclear attack on Moscow would be “wiped out”, and that Russian weapons could forcefully respond

• December 9, 2022

Russian president says future prisoner swaps with US are possible and Russia’s hypersonic weapons would defend it if attacked.

• December 9, 2022

The disputes concern alleged Chinese restrictions on EU companies’ rights to use a foreign court to protect their high-tech patents, and trade with EU member Lithuania.

• December 7, 2022

A mysterious weapon has hit one of Russia’s largest and most important military airfields.

• December 7, 2022

Belarus plans to move military equipment and forces in a ‘counterterrorism’ exercise, state media reports.

• December 7, 2022

By Vusal GULIYEV, Visiting Research Fellow at the Asian Studies Center of Boğaziçi University

In light of Russia’s increasing isolation from global markets due to a series of Western-led sanctions, the development of functional, secure, and integrated freight railway networks between Europe and Asia, beyond the territory of the Russian Federation, has come to dominate the discourse over the past several months. The disruption of commercial operations through the northern rail lines catapulted the popularity of the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR), an overland network of road, rail lines, and maritime transport that traverses Central Asia, the South Caucasus, and Middle East whilst circumventing Russian territory. Consequently, the current geopolitical circumstance in Eastern Europe has allowed the host economies of the TITR—i.e., Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and Türkiye—to reinforce the development of mutual political and economic bonds in order to strategically and effectively operationalize a uniform policy toward the sustainable implementation of the TITR. In the wake of heavy economic sanctions on Moscow, the major transit countries located along this overland trade channel have taken concrete steps toward achieving the expansion of transcontinental transit opportunities and attracting more international cargo shipments by realizing the rapid commercialization of this multimodal cross-regional route. READ MORE

• December 6, 2022

By Benyamin POGHOSYAN, PhD, Chairman, Center for Political and Economic Strategic Studies

The developments of the last three weeks have proved that Armenia and Azerbaijan are far from signing a peace agreement, at least by the end of 2022. There is a danger that Azerbaijan may interpret this as a failure of the peace process and use this as a "moral justification" to launch a new large-scale aggression. If this happens, it will push Armenia and Azerbaijan further back from any chance to reach an agreement and deepen the mutual mistrust.
In recent months Armenia – Azerbaijan negotiation process passed through several ups and downs. The September 13-14, 2022, Azerbaijani aggression seemed to jeopardize the fragile achievements reached during the three Brussel summits held in April, May, and August 2022. However, immediately after the ceasefire reached on September 14, there was a new push toward reaching a peace agreement. Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers met in New York in late September and Geneva on October 2; Secretary of the Armenian Security Council Armen Grigoryan had a meeting with President Aliyev’s top foreign policy aide Hikmet Hajiyev in Washington on September 27, 2022. READ MORE

• December 6, 2022

Al Jazeera interviews Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO’s chief from 2009 until 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea.

• December 2, 2022