Russia-Israel Relations at the Backdrop of Wars in the Middle East and the Eastern Europe

The article is an updated version of the opinion paper first published by this author in Riddle Russia magazine 03 July 2026. Relations between Russia and Israel since their restoration on the eve of the collapse of the USSR can be conventionally divided into three main stages.

A Year of Peace (the Kremlin Never Wanted)

Twelve months after the White House ceremony that startled the Caucasus, Yerevan and Baku are trading grain, oil, and even goodwill — an outcome that owes less to diplomacy-as-usual than to Ilham Aliyev’s decision to finish a war Moscow preferred to keep simmering.

On the Potential of the Kazakh Irredenta in the Russian Federation

Kazakhstan is the second-largest state by area (after the Russian Federation) to have emerged as a result of the collapse of the USSR. At the time it gained independence, it was also the only post-Soviet state in which the titular nation constituted a minority. As a result of the large-scale colonization of its territory by non-indigenous populations, predominantly Russians, under the Russian Empire and subsequently the USSR, the share of Kazakhs declined from 81.8% to 30% between the censuses of 1897 and 1959.

Written Sovereignty: Turkey, Russia, and Iran in the Battle Over Post-Soviet Scripts

Script is rarely a neutral technical choice in this region. Which alphabet a state teaches its children is a declared vector of civilizational allegiance — a public signal of which power it expects to matter for its future. This is what "written sovereignty" means in practice: not legal independence, but the ongoing, contested right to decide whose cultural gravity a nation writes itself into. Three powers are currently making competing claims on that gravity in the post-Soviet Turkic and Persianate world — Turkey, Russia, and Iran — and they are not equally equipped to press the claim.

Azerbaijan Uses the Middle Corridor to Consolidate Its Geopolitical Position

The Middle Corridor, officially known as the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR), is a vital logistics route connecting East Asia and Europe. It is a multimodal corridor combining road, rail and maritime transport. By bypassing traditional northern transport routes, it helps strengthen regional connectivity and improve trade efficiency. Azerbaijan plays a key role in this transport network, using its strategic position on the Caspian Sea to ensure the uninterrupted transit of goods between China, Central Asian countries and European markets.

BESA Post-Soviet Conflicts Research Digest No. 34 (July 2026)

In July 2026, the BESA PSCR program analyzed political developments in Ukraine, Russia, Central Asia, and the South Caucasus.

Monthly Monitoring of Analytical Publications on Post-Soviet Conflicts

The key word in this issue of our monitoring, analyzing scientific publications and reports from June 2026, is «war». News reports have taught us that war is no longer a crisis, a brief storm between periods of peace, but the new norm. There is less and less research on war itself; more and more research on how war changes and transforms the everyday fabric of life. Israelis have known this for a long time, since the founding of our country. Now the rest of the world is feeling it along with us.

The Status of Indigenous Small-Numbered Peoples of the Russian Federation as a Source of Systemic Conflicts: A Typological Analysis (2025–2026)

The institution of indigenous small-numbered peoples (ISNP) in the Russian Federation represents a unique legal phenomenon, combining constitutional guarantees, special federal and regional legislation, and a system of preferences designed to compensate for the vulnerability of ethnic groups numbering fewer than 50,000 persons. However, as an analysis of public information for 2025–2026 demonstrates, the very status of ISNP, which presupposes the granting of special rights and benefits, generates multiple conflicts of various natures.

What Azerbaijan’s Mediation within the Israeli-Turkish Disputes Reveals about the Current State of Affairs between Jerusalem and Ankara

One of the geopolitical aftermaths of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, is the deteriorating bilateral relations between Israel and Türkiye. The South Caucasus state of Azerbaijan, which considers both states its closest allies, unsurprisingly once again serves as a mediator between the two antagonists. Drawing on expert interviews and qualitative data, this paper will be the first to illuminate these mediation efforts in greater detail.

Tolerated Memory, Withheld Recognition: Iran, the Armenian Genocide, and the Politics of Historical Asymmetry

Armenian memory is tolerated because suppressing it would alienate a loyal and historically integrated community; Armenian genocide recognition is withheld because granting it would cost more than it would gain. The community is permitted to remember. The state declines to confirm. This equilibrium becomes considerably more complex — and analytically more revealing — when placed alongside Iran's position on the Holocaust. Here the Islamic Republic has not chosen strategic silence. It has chosen active denial.

PSCRP