Eurasia

Recently, I attended a book launch. The book is about China (I am withholding the name of the book). I did not read the book, but like most official book launches, a flyer capturing the core messages of the book was circulated at the Launch event. The core messages of …

Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping agreed in a video call on Wednesday: Russia and China should stand firm in rejecting Western interference and defending each other’s security interests. The two presidents’ conversation, eight days after Putin spoke to U.S. President Joe Biden in a similar format, underscored how U.S.-Europe …

The Fed’s policy committee announced it would both end its bond-buying program and likely raise interest rates sooner than had been expected. “Inflation is more persistent and higher, and that the risk of it remaining higher for longer has grown,” Fed chair Jerome Powell explained. Translated: Powell and the Fed …

Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States of America recently held the inaugural meetings of the AUKUS Trilateral Joint Steering Groups, which were established as part of the governance structure of AUKUS in September 2021. The Joint Steering Group for Advanced Capabilities met on December 9 and the Joint …

Russia has published a wish list of security conditions that it wants to negotiate with the United States and NATO, including an end to the alliance’s eastward expansion and military cooperation with countries such as Ukraine and Georgia, terms that analysts say will be nearly impossible for Washington to accept. …

The proposal comes amid the virtual collapse of Russia-NATO ties in recent months, and weeks of claims by the US and its European allies that Moscow may be ‘preparing to invade’ Ukraine. Russian officials and the military have dismissed the claims, accusing the West of artificially ratcheting up tensions and …

It started in 2009; the financial crisis that hit the world a year earlier was storming through the Balkans, and the region was scraping the bottom of the barrel to make ends meet. Enter China. Greece opened its door through the Port of Piraeus, while Serbia declared China the ‘fourth …

Critics say formal military ties between Bucharest and Chisinau would inflame Russia, strain Romania’s military capacities – and require a good deal of political will in both capitals. As Russia-Ukraine tensions continue amid talk of a possible spring invasion of Ukraine, Moldovan ex-defence minister Viorel Cibotaru has proposed an extended …

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited India in the first week of December. The visit was significant in part because Putin has not traveled abroad to attend recent summits in person, like the G-20 in late October in Rome and COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland in November. Putin did go, however, to …

Saule Omarova, the proud Komsomol who wrote about Karl Marx on a Lenin scholarship, has withdrawn her nomination and will not be the next comptroller of the currency in the Treasury Department. The Moscow State alum, once arrested for theft, aimed to replicate Soviet banking in America. Senator Tim Scott …