December 19, 2021 Eurasia
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 …
Read More »
December 19, 2021 Eurasia
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. …
Read More »
December 19, 2021 Eurasia
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 …
Read More »
December 17, 2021 Eurasia, South East Asia
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 …
Read More »
December 17, 2021 Balkans, South East Asia
BIRN’s new interactive map pinpoints China’s growing business presence in the region – which experts say media and civil society need to focus on more. Experts and journalists have warned that Chinese loans and investments in the Balkans lack a desirable level of transparency and say more of a focus …
Read More »
December 17, 2021 Eurasia, Romania
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 …
Read More »
December 17, 2021 Balkans
Kosovo is trying to reintegrate returnees from the Islamic State. But its strategy on religious extremism must evolve too, experts say. In the backyard of a house in the southern Kosovo city of Prizren, a four-year-old girl sits with a smartphone listening to Ilahi, a form of Islamic song. The …
Read More »
December 17, 2021 Eurasia, India
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 …
Read More »
December 17, 2021 Eurasia
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 …
Read More »
December 17, 2021 Eurasia, South East Asia
China is exploring the possibility of building its first military base on the Atlantic ocean, according to classified intelligence reports viewed by the Wall Street Journal. The proposed host for the military base is Equatorial Guinea, a small central African country of approximately 1.4 million people. Politically, Equatorial Guinea is …
Read More »