Prénom de l'expert

Pavel

Nom de l'expert

BAEV

The long war in Ukraine has brought a drastic geopolitical reconfiguration of the Baltic theater and a deep shift in the military balance between Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

The extraordinarily troublesome year 2020 tested many international institutions and bilateral ties, but few experienced sharper challenges than the complex relations between Russia and Turkey, which have a strong impact on crisis developments in Europe’s immediate neighborhood.

A full-blown war erupted in the South Caucasus last Sunday, September 27, and as the two belligerents — Armenia and Azerbaijan — mobilize their forces under martial law, no international authority is trying in earnest to stop the hostilities. The conflict over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region ignited 30 years ago as the Soviet Union was collapsing and has never effectively “frozen.” The cease-fire Russia negotiated in May 1994 was not backed by a peacekeeping operation, and clashes have kept occurring, most notably in April 2016.

Russian strategic culture is evolving fast, despite the consolidation of the ruling regime, which is maturing into a more rigid autocracy, whereby its ideological outlook becomes increasingly conservative.

The July 16, 2018, face-to-face between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin is both entirely natural and extremely unconventional, very encouraging and deeply disturbing.

The struggle against terrorism is supposed to be one part of security policy in which Russia has every necessary capability and know-how, and its special services can draw on vast experience without encountering the legal and institutional constraints that often interfere with Western efforts.

Since the start of the Ukraine crisis in early 2014, the states of East Central Europe have become increasingly important targets of Russian economic, political and military pressure. Russia finds itself in the trajectory of geopolitical retreat on the Western “front”, and seeks to slow down this process by mobilizing every economic, political and military asset in East Central Europe, where various weak points in the European and Atlantic unity exist—and are typically overestimated by Moscow.

In the recent years Russia has made a significant effort in favor of modernizing its armed forces which allowed it to execute the swift annexation of Crimea in March 2014.