Eurasia

The Russian ruble extended a recent slump Thursday, declining 17% against the U.S. dollar in 48 hours to reach its lowest level since late May. The ruble hit 64.5 against the greenback during morning trading on the Moscow Exchange as the Russian authorities apparently intervened in currency markets to stop …

Russia’s top diplomat stormed out of talks with G20 foreign ministers meeting in Indonesia on Friday as Western powers criticized Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine. Washington and allies condemned Russia’s assault ahead of the meeting before Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov faced what U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called …

President Vladimir Putin said Monday that Russia will continue pressing forward in eastern Ukraine after Kyiv ordered its forces to retreat from the strategic city of Lysychansk and Russian officials claimed control over the entirety of Ukraine’s Luhansk region. “Military units … must carry out their tasks according to previously …

The Islamic State, or ISIS, made global headlines recently on account of two significant developments in Syria: a prison uprising in Hasakeh in late January and the raid by U.S. special operations forces a week later, on Feb. 3, that resulted in the death of ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi …

Normalization of diplomatic ties with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad raises troubling questions for humanists who are also realists. When an evil regime wins a bloody war that allows it stay in power, how can a liberal-democratic state express solidarity for victims of that regime’s brutality without engaging in fantasy politics? …

Iran’s chief negotiator traveled to Oman a day after Qatar’s foreign minister visited Tehran in what seemed to be diplomatic efforts for an impetus to US-Iran nuclear talks. Top Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani was in Oman, one of the very few allies of the Islamic Republic in the …

The United States and United Kingdom touted a small win for regional security cooperation ahead of President Joe Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia next week. A British warship seized shipments of Iranian cruise and surface-to-air missiles in the Gulf of Oman for the first time earlier this year, the UK …

“People will die because of this vote,” US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said of the Security Council’s failure to reauthorize the cross-border mechanism. Millions of Syrian lives hang in the balance after Russia vetoed a UN Security Council resolution on Friday that would have kept humanitarian aid flowing …

Turkey’s ambassador to Kyiv has been summoned to voice Ukraine’s displeasure over its grain stolen by Russia and shipped to Turkish ports. Turkey’s relations with Ukraine are showing increasing signs of strain five months into Russia’s invasion of its Black Sea neighbor. The brewing friction stems from Ukrainian allegations that …

The Scowcroft Center’s project on twenty-first-century diplomacy Earlier this year, the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security launched a project on twenty-first-century diplomacy, generously supported by Dataminr, to address how US diplomacy should adapt to meet twenty-first-century challenges. To begin this project, the center hosted a workshop that brought together …