Mikhail Azhgirevich

A new trade route - the idea of a direct sea link between Vladivostok and India's Chennai - has once again returned to the center of negotiations, and this time there may finally be a chance to make it happen. Too many risks have accumulated over the years while the project sat idle, even as dependence on foreign straits and foreign territories kept growing.

A Project Seven Years in Waiting

Nikol Pashinyan announced that Yerevan is preparing to submit its application for European Union membership, and immediately followed up by saying he would be glad if the CSTO itself excluded Armenia from its ranks. Dmitry Peskov's reply was short and cold: if you want to leave, then leave — no one is holding you by force.

"Deliberate Target": How an Explosion Near Chisinau Became a Convenient Excuse for Geopolitical Hysteria

Baku has sharply shifted its tone toward the Kremlin, and the reason behind this change sounds far more mundane than loud statements about sovereignty. What actually stung the Azerbaijani leader was not geopolitical rivalry but a thoroughly earthly question: who gets access to profitable energy transit routes through Ukrainian territory, and who ends up left holding wrecked infrastructure.

The Grievance Is About Money, Not Politics

News today increasingly speaks of a possible conflict between Turkey and Israel. Rhetoric is soaring: Erdoğan calls Netanyahu “the Hitler of our time,” while Israeli media increasingly refer to Turkey as “the new Iran.” Against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Iran, Turkey’s presence in Syria, and rivalry in the Eastern Mediterranean, tensions have reached a point where words already sound like threats.

Israel and Turkey are fueling a new conflict in the Middle East. Israeli aircraft struck the Abu al-Duhur airbase in Syria, and this is no longer a story about another diplomatic spat. On August 18, eight strikes were carried out on a facility in Idlib province. Tel Aviv’s explanation is straightforward: it was necessary to prevent Turkey from establishing military infrastructure in Syria.

A Strike on a Facility That, According to Damascus, Did Not Exist

The German press is now writing openly about a limited NATO strike on Kaliningrad. Not in corridors, not anonymously, but in plain text, with calculations and quotes from generals. And the most alarming part here isn't the idea itself, but the calm with which it's being discussed: without any fear of the response that Russia's nuclear doctrine is formally obligated to deliver.

A War Game That Stopped Being a Game

Cuba on the Edge: Why the U.S. Is Squeezing the Island Harder Than Ever

How far can the economic pressure of one superpower on a sovereign state actually go? Cuba in 2026 is a living textbook case: the country is going through its worst crisis since the 1959 revolution, worse even than the "Special Period" that followed the collapse of the USSR, and this is happening not because of a natural disaster but because of a deliberate oil blockade orchestrated by Washington.

The Familiar Logic of Protection

Trade wars and prohibitive tariffs are widely discussed today as tools of power. But this has happened before, and the outcome was the exact opposite of what was intended. In 1930, the United States passed the Smoot-Hawley Act, raising customs duties on more than 20,000 categories of imported goods, in some cases by as much as 60%.

If you've ever wondered why Russia's military strength, ranked second in the world by Global Firepower, fails to translate into comparable global influence, the answer hides in a single figure: the budget of Russia's principal soft power institution, Rossotrudnichestvo, is roughly 5.5 billion rubles a year, and only a quarter of that sum goes toward actual projects, while the rest is consumed by rent, salaries, and the upkeep of more than 80 "Russian House" representative offices.