Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed victory on Monday in defending Kazakhstan from what he described as a foreign-backed terrorist uprising, and promised leaders of other ex-Soviet states that a Moscow-led alliance would protect them too.

• January 10, 2022

U.S. President Joe Biden on Sunday told Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy the United States and its allies will "respond decisively" if Russia further invades Ukraine, the White House said in a statement.

• January 3, 2022

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock will travel to Washington on Wednesday, where she will discuss topics including the Russia-Ukraine conflict with her U.S. counterpart, Antony Blinken, and other politicians, a ministry spokesperson said on Monday.

• January 3, 2022

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

More than one year after the 2020 Artsakh War, the future of Armenia–Azerbaijan relations remains vague. Azerbaijan has put forward two demands: Armenia in written form should recognize Nagorno Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan and provide uncontrolled access to Azerbaijan to reach the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic via the Syunik province. Simultaneously, Azerbaijan has launched the strategy of coercive diplomacy and military blackmail, refusing to free all remaining Armenian POWs and advancing into Armenian territory. The release of POWs is a clearly articulated agreement fixed in the November 10, 2020 trilateral statement. However, Azerbaijan argues that Armenians still languishing in Azerbaijani jails are POWs and are not covered by that statement. Baku successfully merged the POWs’ issue with maps of mine fields, thus forcing Armenia to accept the humans versus maps bargain. READ MORE

• December 18, 2021

Russia said on Friday it wanted a legally binding guarantee that the NATO military alliance would give up any military activity in Eastern Europe and Ukraine, part of a wish list of ambitious security guarantees it wants to negotiate with the West.

• December 17, 2021

Dec 17 (Reuters) - The European Union may take the trade row between China and Lithuania to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) if it finds evidence that Beijing is violating international trade rules, the bloc's executive Commission said on Friday.

• December 17, 2021

Eugene Kogan, Tbilisi-based defence and security expert

Amid heightened tensions between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine, the issue of Georgia’s path to NATO membership is once again in the spotlight. While Tbilisi has made real progress in its military reform efforts, the major hurdle is political, not military, in nature and until the Alliance can achieve consensus, the future of Georgia’s relationship with NATO will remain uncertain. In March 2019, then-Georgian Defence Minister Levan Izoria heralded a new era in military reform: “In the past we trained our soldiers for external deployment, but the new emphasis is now on self-defence” — or rather territorial defence, a process that began to be addressed by U.S.-based military advisers in July 2016. READ MORE.

• December 15, 2021

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

Regardless of the intentions of the US and the future trajectory of the new world order transformation, the democracy vs. authoritarianism vision puts small states located between Russia and Europe in a complicated situation.
As the "Unipolar Moment" started to fade away after the 2008 world financial crisis, political elites, the expert community, and academicians in the different capitals of the world launched discussions and debates about the future of the world order. There was no lack of catchy terms – post-American world, multi-polar world, no polar world, polycentric world, the rise of others – which all have one common feature; there will be many players active on the geopolitical chessboard of the globe, and the US will not be able to impose its vision on all of them. The US political establishment coined its term for the emerging world order – great power competition – which is the prevailing theme in all strategic level documents published by the Trump and Biden administrations. READ MORE

• December 8, 2021