Russia’s purpose in arranging the meeting between representatives of the Assad regime and its opponents is to promote the idea that Syrian reconciliation can be achieved through dialogue between all non-extremist Syrian groups and without involvement from outside.
2014 was a year of crisis. Ebola, ISIS, and Donbas are now part of the global lexicon. Eurasia Outlook experts weigh in on how crises on Russia’s periphery affected the country, and what these developments mean for Moscow in 2015.
President Vladimir Putin’s recent state visit to Turkey outlined the long-awaited breakthrough in the bilateral relations of the two countries. The meeting brought new life to a relationship that had been characterized by the “limits of growth” problem and that required a qualitative broadening of the established model of cooperation.
Vladimir Putin’s trip to Turkey could help him recover from the cold-shouldering at the G20 summit in Brisbane, but it will not make Ankara abandon its great strategic goal to become an indispensable supplier of natural gas to Europe and a major competitor for Gazprom.
Turkey hesitates to fully embrace the U.S.-led coalition’s actions against the Islamic State. Ankara’s most crucial hesitation relates to the Kurdish issue which plays such a central role in Turkish policy in the Middle East.
The radical jihadi group known as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union. A little bit more than twenty years after it first appeared, this on-going transformation has made it less connected to Uzbekistan, and more to a global jihad.
With the conflict reaching Iraq, which reflects to the same religious divisions as in Azerbaijan, the risk is greater that Azerbaijanis Shia and Sunnites will be affected by the sectarianism of the Middle East.
In 2013 Russia’s foreign policy has finally assumed a new quality, something which will probably last. This foreign policy makes Russia much more of an international player than ever before in the last quarter-century.
Vladimir Putin’s respectful message on the passing of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon proves that to quite a few Russian supporters of a strong state, Israel is the ideal in terms of the cohesion existing between the state and the nation, the effectiveness of and coordination among the military, intelligence and law-enforcement agencies, and defense of its interests.
