U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday praised Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan as a friend despite tensions between the two countries over Turkish security officials involved in street fighting with protesters during a visit to Washington in May.

• September 21, 2017

U.S. President Donald Trump ordered new sanctions on Thursday that open the door wider to blacklisting people and entities doing business with North Korea, including its shipping and trade networks, further tightening the screws on Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile program.

• September 21, 2017

By Benyamin Poghosyan, PhD, Executive Director, Political Science Association of Armenia

Turkey's decision to buy Russia's S-400 missile defence system opens a new stage in relations between the two countries.
Over the last two years Russia-Turkey relations have gone through tremendous transformations. Immediately after the November 2015 incident, when Turkish military jets shot down a Russian war plane, Russia imposed tough economic sanctions on Turkey and publicly accused President Erdogan of supporting terrorism, including "Islamic State". The situation dramatically changed in summer 2016 when Erdogan apologized for the November 2015 incident. READ MORE

• September 20, 2017

By Elkhan Nuriyev, BREC Global Energy Associate, EGF Affiliated Expert

This opinion piece applies post-conflict scenario planning to the future of the regional energy security cooperation in the Black Sea-Caspian basin and describes collaborative steps that could be taken by all relevant players to think more deeply about promoting the integration of energy markets in this part of the world.
Notwithstanding the most acute unpredictability of the new societies in Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus and Central Asia in the 1990s, the young states simultaneously faced the need for intense capital investments in their energy sectors that could drive economic growth. Since then, both the Black Sea and the Caspian basin alike have become crossroads for increased commerce and economic development as the old Silk Road is revived. READ MORE

• September 20, 2017

The European Commission is set to propose on Wednesday stricter controls of foreign financial firms that do business in the EU, a move that would extend European regulators’ supervision over London, Europe’s biggest financial center, after Britain leaves the bloc.

• September 19, 2017

The North Korean nuclear issue must be resolved peacefully, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Russian counterpart during a meeting at the United Nations, China’s Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.

• September 19, 2017

President Vladimir Putin observed Russia’s biggest war games in years on Monday, watching as his forces successfully repelled an imaginary enemy and launched a tank-led counter offensive, part of an exercise that has rattled the West.

• September 19, 2017

By Eugene Kogan, Tbilisi-based defence and security expert

There is a preconceived and very inaccurate perception in the West at large that the Russian Military-Industrial Complex (MIC) has and will continue to have difficulties in the coming years because Russia faces domestic economic challenges caused by the low price of oil, continuing economic sanctions imposed by the EU and the US and the breakdown of defence industrial relations with Ukraine.
There is very little understanding in the West that for President Vladimir Putin the issue of rearmament and well-functioning of the MIC are of crucial importance, and that the Russian president is not ready to give up an inch in tenaciously pursuing this ambitious items on his domestic agenda. READ MORE

• September 14, 2017