Armenia's energy sector is boxed in by Moscow's EAEU rules and a stalled EU deal. Rimma Sanchez on Tsivilev's Africa playbook, now in Yerevan.

On 23 July 2026, the EU adopted its 21st sanctions package against Russia as part of its efforts in the war it is waging against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. Measures in the package include a price cap on Russian oil of $44 per barrel, permission for member states to sell confiscated oil, and a visa ban for Russian combatants. This brings the cumulative total of sanctioned individuals and entities to a record 3,100. The EU, however, finds itself in a quagmire, with me

The winds of change are now sweeping across Iceland. The island has finally come to terms with the volatile nature of current geopolitics as dictated by Trump’s vulgar realpolitik, Putin’s aggressive historical-political revisionism and China’s growing forays into the international arena. In response, the Icelandic Samfylkingin government is now planning to restart EU accession talks, which have been suspended since 2013. The process was abandoned in 2013 due to a standst

India’s 2022 Arctic Policy has been framed as an expression of the Hindu philosopher, Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’s, “the world is but one family.” The Government of India identified “Science and Research” and “Climate and Environmental Protection” as its first two strategic priorities. Meanwhile, earlier this year in May, in the joint statement of the Third India-Nordic Summit, “cooperation in the Arctic” was emphasised, mirroring the Arctic Policy’s signal of willingness to colla

CPAC UK ran this past July 16 – a disconcerting day for many, including myself. Having worked on a start-up magazine for some time with a media veteran – and resultantly used to a diverse but nevertheless objective array of politicians’, professors’, and authors’ viewpoints – I had been surprised to learn of my partner’s contacts attending CPAC, whom he swore weren’t all right-wing loons, and even more shocked to learn he knew people speaking on the main stage, too. I was a

On July 14th 2026, under the scorching Parisian sun, French military troops marched down the historical Champs Elysées. Unusually, this year the military parade was opened by the thirty five countries making up the Coalition of the Willing, flying over and marching down the avenue in front of their respective leaders. What followed was one the biggest parades ever witnessed on Bastille Day, with 6.700 troops, 98 aircrafts, 31 helicopters and 315 vehicles mobilised, simultaneo

It seems an energy crisis is once again being manufactured, not only by war but by deliberate policy. The Strait of Hormuz, the passageway for a fifth of the world’s traded oil, is shut once again. The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve is at its lowest level since 1983. Russia, the world’s second-largest diesel exporter, has banned all diesel exports. And Europe heads into the winter with the lowest gas reserves in 15 years, while paradoxically purchasing record volumes of gas f

Russia’s Central Bank raised its key interest rate to a two-decade high of 21% in late 2024 after a surge in inflation. Since then, it has pursued a policy of monetary easing, with the cut from 14.5% to 14.25% on 19th June marking the ninth consecutive cut. This has surprised some analysts, who were expecting a 50-basis-point cut. More broadly, it reflects the cautious approach that Elvira Nabiullina, Governor of the Central Bank of Russia, has taken toward the economy, with

Global security alliances have enjoyed a resurgence in relevance as regions the world over come under ever-increasing geopolitical strain. In the shadow of this global uncertainty, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) will convene its 2026 summit in Türkiye on 7-8 July 2026. Originally confined to the Euro-Atlantic domain, catering to traditional security, the alliance’s footprint has assumed a global dimension. India, though outside its formal structure, remains a p

For years, the Kremlin has marketed itself as a dependable security patron for embattled regimes by offering military support, mercenaries, and diplomatic cover without Western-style political conditions. However, recent setbacks in Mali, alongside immense pressure on Russian partners in Syria, Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba reveal that Moscow fares much better at preventing immediate collapse rather than delivering long-term stability. It is not that the Russians necessarily aban

Transnistria's secessionist project is in structural decline. Russian patronage has thinned and public services have deteriorated. The Sheriff conglomerate, the dominant economic force in the region, has reoriented toward European markets in ways that sit uneasily alongside Moscow's strategic preferences. Chișinău, meanwhile, has been methodically exploiting this opening, using customs duties, tax harmonisation, and a nascent reintegration blueprint to draw Transnistria incre

President Donald Trump’s ambition to acquire Greenland is indicative of a historic shift not only in American foreign policy, but in global perceptions of the High North: the Arctic is no longer an innocuous area of scientific exploration, but a political-military nexus of global power competition. This article problematises three loci of NATO, Russian and Chinese power projection in the Arctic. With the onset of climate change, temperatures in the Arctic are rising rapidly b

A recent trip to the Baltic states of Latvia and Estonia impressed on me an increasingly prescient political issue requiring ever more European attention: the status of non-citizen Russians in the Baltics. As of 2024, in Estonia 61,000 people have ‘undetermined citizenship’. In Latvia, 175,000 people have noncitizen status, making up 9% of the population. These murky categories exist as a result of a desire to protect independence and cultural heritage after the Baltic states

Orbán spent 16 years making himself the EU’s biggest problem. His legacy, it turns out, is an opposition equipped with a supermajority to dismantle everything that he built – if they choose to. Last Sunday, Péter Magyar 's insurgent Tisza party got the mandate to re-wire the state Viktor Orbán had consolidated around himself. For the EU, the implications of this election are immediate, and for once are in Brussels’ favour. The most relevant and urgent consequence is that the

‘For any government official or despot, power over his own people takes precedence over everything else’- Jean Baudrillard In Terry Gilliam’s Kafkaesque black comedy Brazil (1985), Sam Lowry, a low-ranking bureaucrat, joins his affluent, ostentatious mother, Ida, in a restaurant. Their meal is served - at which point - sudden explosions blast shrapnel across the room, saturating the air with shouting, screams, and smoke. The restaurant has been subject to a terrorist attack

While the United States and much of the world was focused on the fallout from the Epstein files, the second phase of the Gaza peace plan began . If the current Trump administration manages to deliver a breakthrough in the Middle East, it would be by far the president’s most significant achievement on the world stage so far. Talk of a Nobel Peace Prize for Trump may have died down, but his own desire for it remains obvious, as shown by his angry messages to the Norwegian prime

With a grim expression and a somber tone of voice Canadian PM Mark Carney spoke at Davos . He spoke not just to the room of elites in front of him but to civilian populations across the world. The conversations that have undoubtedly been taking place behind closed doors for years were now made public: “Let me be clear. We are in a rupture, not a transition. Over the past two decades a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extr

Northern Europe’s security centre of gravity has moved north and east since 2022: the Baltic Sea, the GIUK gap , the Norwegian Sea, and Arctic approaches now define the front edge of deterrence and reinforcement. In this setting, Ukraine should be analysed less as the object of Northern policy and more as the catalyst that is reshaping it. Two overlapping mini-laterals, NB8 and JEF , offer a pragmatic architecture, one optimised for political alignment and signalling, the ot

International sanctions often hurl target states into a form of survival mode. Since invading Ukraine, Russia has faced increasing isolation from Western nations . This isolation has extended beyond politics and economics into the world of international sport. Russian teams and officials have been expelled or suspended from numerous international sporting federations, significantly reducing the country’s presence on the global sporting stage. The 2024 Paris Olympic Games saw

From a distance it is hard to see why Vladimir Putin did not accept December’s peace plan for the Ukraine war, to prevent it entering its fourth year. The deal would have forced Ukraine to secede far more territory to Russia than the actual inroads made. Ukraine would have to hold elections, be forbidden from joining NATO, and reduce the size of its army. These were all crucial war aims for Russia before the beginning of the ‘special military operation,’ so it is mystifying