The South China Morning Post published an intriguing piece in late August about how China could use the Irtysh-Ob river system to connect to the Arctic Ocean via Xinjiang, Kazakhstan, and Russia. Although they noted that “The Chinese government...
Myanmarese Vice President U Nyo Saw was one of Putin’s guests of honor at this year’s Eastern Economic Forum. His visit to Russia in early September followed President Min Aung Hlaing’s in late August in a symbolic display of...
Observers are concerned about another humanitarian crisis in Ethipoia’s Tigray Region, where a second Northern Conflict has just broken out after the last one from 2020-2022, following the decision by the radical faction of the ruling TPLF party-militia to...
Algerian Prime Minister Sifi Ghrieb recently held talks with his Malian counterpart Abdoulaye Maiga in Bamako two months after the restoration of their relations. They were earlier severed in spring 2025 after Algeria shot down a Malian drone that...
Zelensky recently proposed a partial truce with Russia that would include, among other things, eschewing attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure. The strategic context concerns Russia’s ramped-up systematic strike campaign against Ukrainian power plants, gas stations, ports, and most...
Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski met with his Belarusian counterpart on the sidelines of the UNGA last week in the first talks between their countries’ top diplomats in a decade. He said that they were facilitated by the relative...
Finnish President Alexander Stubb is no friend of Russia, but he’s also nowhere near as politically Russophobic as the vast majority of his NATO counterparts, which contextualizes his latest efforts to try to talk some sense into them amidst...
A Ukrainian was apprehended on Thursday after stabbing five people at the Benedictine Sisters’ monastery in the southeastern Polish town of Jarosław near the border with Ukraine, three of whom were priests and at least one of which was...
The radical faction of the recently divided “Tigray People’s Liberation Front” (TPLF), which was the dominant member of Ethiopia’s ruling coalition till 2018 before sparking the Northern Conflict against the federal government from 2020-2022, declared the start of a...
Valdai Club Programme Director Timofei Bordachev published an intriguing piece at his think tank in late September about “Europe and the Conflict in Ukraine: A Changing Historical Context”. His main point is that “Europe’s elites are no longer fighting...
