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 …

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 …

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 …