Eurasia

Ankara demands “concrete steps” from Sweden and Finland before giving the nod to NATO’s Nordic enlargement, including an “asset freeze,” a demand that hasn’t been expressed publicly before. Turkey will wait for more concrete steps — including a freeze of “terror assets” in Sweden and Finland — before giving a …

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has signaled his intent to soon launch the ground phase of Operation Claw-Sword, a military operation designed to clear areas along Turkey’s southern borders of fighters from affiliates of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party or PKK, which the United States lists as a terrorist organization. A …

In light of the ongoing Russia crisis, the Scowcroft Center’s Forward Defense (FD) practice will share weekly assessments of the latest force developments surrounding Ukraine, leveraging the expert perspectives of our senior military fellows. The opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied here are solely those of the authors and …

They’re spreading like wildfire. The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) restrictive policies to limit COVID-19 have sparked a wave of protests from Xinjiang province to Beijing to Shanghai. And the protesters are looking for much more than an end to severe lockdowns; some are also pushing for Xi Jinping to step …

What China’s Leader Wants—and How to Stop Him From Getting It In October, at the 20th National Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), General Secretary Xi Jinping set himself up for another decade as China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, replaced his most economically literate Politburo colleagues …

The UK, Côte d’Ivoire and other nations plan to pull their troops out of the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali, clouding its future as it undergoes internal review. In this Q&A, Crisis Group experts discuss the mission’s challenges and scenarios for what could come next. What is new with the …

Azerbaijan has begun importing gas from Russia under a deal which should enable Baku to meet its own domestic demand but which raises serious questions over its recent agreement to boost exports to Europe.  Russia’s state gas producer and exporter Gazprom announced on November 18 that it had begun supplying gas to …

While symbolic and non-binding, the decision by the European Parliament (EP) to formally recognise Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism is a significant development since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began back in February. Given foreign policy remains a core competency of the 27 individual EU member states, national parliaments would …

On 21 October 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “partial mobilisation” of up to 3,00,000 military reservists, aged 18 to 50 in the Russian armed forces, to fight on the Ukrainian front. This marked the first such mobilisation since the Second World War. Notably, this development was preceded by …

In January 2022, as Russian troops were massing on Ukraine’s border, the U.S. government withdrew support for the EastMed natural gas pipeline, claiming the project conflicted with the environmental goals of the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, and created tensions in the region. The pipeline, set to be completed by 2025, was a €6 …