Black Sea

Transnistria, or the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR), exists unsure of its place in the world. To its west, across the Dniester River, lies the breakaway region’s parent state, Moldova, and, beyond that, European Union (EU) member Romania. To the...

The intent of Russian strategic deception is to alter a target population's perception of reality in the interest of advancing some strategic objective or set of objectives. One Russian deception technique is disinformation, which includes intentionally misrepresenting events. Strategic...

The number of conflicts is again on the rise as both states and violent actors contend for influence and seek to establish their position. Contrary to optimistic depictions of the present international system, there are powers seeking to alter...

Gagauzia, known formally as the Republic of Moldova’s Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauzia, is of little consequence economically or otherwise, save one thing: it sits by historical accident atop a geopolitical fracture line where Russian, Turkish and Western geopolitical...

New Atlanticist On July 7, 2014, Russian-backed separatists entered Donetsk and occupied four dormitories at Donetsk National University; armed gunmen expelled students from their rooms in the middle of the night. Nine days later, the separatists seized the entire university....

President Putin’s government’s actions over the past few years have left Russia largely isolated from majority of the rest of the world; certainly from Europe and the U.S. Annexing Crimea in 2014, starting a war in Ukraine’s East, supporting...

The Russia-West relationship saw significant worsening as the Ukraine crisis unfolded in late 2013. After Ukraine’s President Yanukovych backed out of signing the EU Association Agreement, an agreement that was designed to put Ukraine on a path go greater...

Speaking at a November 2011 Valdai roundtable in Krasnogorsk, Russian President Vladimir Putin famously compared the European Union to a hamster, which, having stuffed its cheeks with food—a metaphor for new member-states—now finds itself unable to swallow....

On July 20, investigative journalist Pavel Sheremet was assassinated in Kyiv. Sheremet hosted a morning show at Radio Vesti and was a top reporter atUkrainska Pravda. A crusading journalist and native of Minsk, Belarus, he had already been expelled...

The tenor of NATO’s summit in Warsaw late last week focused overwhelmingly on deterring Russia’s military adventurism. While it was a positive turn for members of the alliance’s eastern flank, such as Poland and the Baltic states, longstanding NATO...