Finland and Sweden are set to join NATO as early as this summer, extending the organization’s borders alongside Russia by hundreds of miles, U.S. officials told the British newspaper the Times. Finland is expected to submit its application for membership in June, with Sweden to follow. During talks among the …

Professor Alexei Maslov, one of Russia’s foremost authorities on China, weighs in on the question preoccupying many Russians: when will Beijing come to Russia’s economic rescue? Interviewed by Moskovskiy Komsomolets’ senior correspondent Mikhail Rostovsky, Maslov intersperses the good news with the bad. On the plus side, official China, and Chinese …

A failed military intervention. The genocidal killing of citizens. Economic isolation by the international community. The arrests of anti-war protestors at home and the shuttering of independent media. Any one of these factors could mark the end of an ordinary political leader. Yet Russian President Vladimir Putin has not only …

Hopeful that the Ukraine war will tip the scales to its favor in Syria, Turkey is taking escalatory steps on the ground on one hand and testing the diplomatic waters with Damascus on the other. The Ukraine war has thawed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s chilly ties with his Western …

By slamming the dissolution of Tunisia’s parliament, Erdogan may have emboldened his ideological allies from the Ennahda party, but his criticism might backfire to further isolate political Islam. Non-interference in domestic affairs and ending support for the Muslim Brotherhood have been two major conditions that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan …

Although the response in Western capitals to Russia’s aggressive military posturing on its border with Ukraine has been couched in clear diplomacy-first terms, military contingency planning has stepped up a notch in recent weeks. The intent of these moves, at least judging from the rhetoric of U.S. and NATO leaders …

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bellicose speech yesterday, in which he announced that Russia had recognized the independence of two separatist regions of Ukraine and would deploy military forces there as “peacekeepers,” suggests that after months of military posturing and diplomacy, a full-scale invasion may well be at hand. But while …

Over the past several years, international policymakers, primarily in the West, as well as journalists and commentators have frequently called attention to Russia’s renewed interest in expanding its footprint in Africa. These discussions of “Russia’s return” to Africa are usually couched in a fearmongering, manichean framework of competition, ostensibly within …

In the aftermath of U.S. President Joe Biden’s announcement last week that he was banning Russian oil imports in the U.S., global markets delivered a stark message to Russia’s leading energy giants: No one wants to buy what they’re selling. No one, that is, other than India, which is the …

While the failure of the United States’ two-decade campaign to reshape Afghanistan was a source of no little schadenfreude in Moscow, the collapse of Ashraf Ghani’s U.S.-backed government has thrust Russia into a challenging position. Even as President Vladimir Putin confirmed that Russia has no intention of deploying troops to …