Carnegie Moscow Center
The Hungarian prime minister’s trip to Moscow was short on substance—despite loud declarations to the contrary. Even a risk-taker like Viktor Orban cannot afford to abandon the West to make separate deals with Russia.
Montenegro’s veteran leader has maneuvered his country into NATO. Russia is upset, but unlikely to respond in a serious manner.
The turmoil in eastern Ukraine has shaken the post–Cold War order. But there is reason to hope a more effective approach to building regional security might be possible.
The dramatic arrest of former prime minister Vlad Filat is probably the work of his fiercest political rival utilizing an unprecedented mistake. It will help expose Moldova’s culture of corruption but may put a halt to its integration with the EU.
Recently re-elected Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is making maneuvers to get closer to the West and distance himself from Russia. But Moscow is not worried: it knows that his fundamental values differentiate him from Western countries.
The merger of President Poroshenko’s party with the UDAR party of Kiev mayor Vitali Klitschko is another step in the consolidation of power by the Ukrainian leader. Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s People’s Front may be the next in line for absorption. But recent Ukrainian history shows that these big united parties have all ended in failure.
Issues such as the Iran deal, the rise of the self-styled Islamic State, and the spread of Russian military and economic influence continue to highlight the importance of the Caucasus region on the world stage.
Following an initially cool reception, many former USSR republics have been lured by the sheer size of China’s investment in the One Belt One Road project, eager to capitalize on the wider initiative in line with their own domestic interests.
Russia is a superpower in decline, and the challenge it poses to the United States is very different from that posed by the Soviet Union.
A theory of “hybrid war” based on the events in Crimea and eastern Ukraine ignores both the chronology and cause-and-effect links between events on the ground.