By Alan WHITEHORN, Professor Emeritus in Political Science, The Royal Military College of Canada

Coming to power after the break-up of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, Lukashenko had ruled Belarus in a highly autocratic fashion for almost three decades, while seeking to navigate his country within Moscow’s sphere of influence. However, the aging leader’s arbitrary rule began to teeter and he faced a major challenge in the election of 2020. When skewed and rigged election results were announced, hundreds of thousands of voters of Belarus peacefully protested their strong objections.
The West echoed moral support to the mass of citizens voicing democratic demands on the streets, but provided little material assistance. Somewhat optimistically and naively, the West trusted that the unarmed people would peacefully prevail over the coercive might of the internal and external dictators in Minsk and Moscow. Putin, by contrast, sensing a vulnerable and weakened regime, provided his fellow authoritarian colleague with external assistance to forcefully crush the peaceful demonstrators. READ MORE

by Dr Jack Sharples (Oxford Institute for Energy Studies and EGF Associate Researcher)
Mike Fulwood (Oxford Institute for Energy Studies)
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We analyse the drivers behind ongoing price rally and offer an outlook for the coming winter. On the global LNG market, unexpected outages meant that growth in supply simply did not keep pace with the increase in demand. Given its role as the ‘balancing market’, European LNG imports declined. This combined with declines in European production and pipeline imports to open a supply gap that could only be met by withdrawals from storage. We conclude that with gas markets noticeably tighter, the ongoing price rally is driven by fundamentals, with an added ‘fear premium’ that the forthcoming winter could be as cold as that in 2020/21. If that proves to be the case, the current price levels will persist, and even rise, while a milder winter could see the market turn slightly more bearish. READ MORE.

By Eugene Kogan, Tbilisi-based defence and security expert

Undoubtedly, the Russian annexation of Crimea in March 2014 caused serious damage to the Ukrainian Naval Forces. About 70 per cent of the fleet has been lost and what remained is in poor shape and in need of repairs.
The resulting conflict in the Eastern part of Ukraine drew attention, energy and resources away from the difficult state of the Ukrainian Navy towards the urgent needs of the army and air force. The perilous state of the economy has further decreased financial support for the Navy’s needs. In addition, a debate on the conceptual vision of the Navy divided the expert community and top naval personnel for about 15 months. READ MORE

By Fuad Shahbazov, Baku-based independent regional security and defence analyst

President Donald Trump’s announcement at the end of 2018 that he would withdraw U.S. troops from Syria came as a surprise to all parties involved, sparking particular concerns among America’s Syrian Kurdish allies. The move followed President Trump’s declaration of victory over ISIS after a four-year military campaign fighting alongside Syrian Kurdish forces. This sudden and unexpected decision has been widely criticized not only by allies but also inside the White House, with many analysts arguing that the U.S. withdrawal will expose the Syrian Kurds to an attack by Turkey READ MORE

By EGF Editorial Staff

Since the end of October 2018, a new operative communication line (crisis hotline) has been established between Armenia and Azerbaijan, two countries that have been at war over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh (NK), a region recognized as Azerbaijani by the International Community, but inhabited by a majority Armenian population. According to official sources from both sides, the level of military tension on the Line of Contact (LoC) between the conflicting parties has significantly decreased (from about 90 reports of ceasefire breaches/day, to about 20 reports/day). The opening of this new communication channel had been agreed several weeks before by the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, and the Prime-Minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan, during an informal meeting held in the margins of the CIS summit in Dushanbe (Tajikistan) on 27-28 September 2018. READ MORE

By George Vlad Niculescu, Head of Research, the European Geopolitical Forum

When at the NATO summit in Brussels, on 25 May 2017, president Donald Trump didn’t say that one sentence committing America to continue standing by article 5 of the NATO Charter, he raised eyebrows across Europe. At that time, everyone remembered that candidate Donald Trump raised serious suspicions that his presidency might lead to the end of the West, as we knew it. Nevertheless, everyone who has ever believed in the strength of the Trans-Atlantic link and in the soft power of the Euro-Atlantic values secretly hoped that the end of Pax Americana in Europe wasn’t that close. READ MORE

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

By Fuad Shahbazov, Expert-advisor, Center for Strategic Studies under the President of the Azerbaijan Republic

Baku hosted the first joint gathering of the heads of the railway administrations of Iran, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine and Poland, on June 19. The meeting was dedicated to the newly-launched “South-West Transport Corridor,” which links into the broader Trans-Caspian International Route project launched in 2016. READ MORE