From the first days of the Russian full-scale invasion into Ukraine in February 2022, there were confusions, misunderstandings, and fears spread within the Russian-speaking Jewish (RSJ) community in the United States.
PSCRP
Donald Trumpโs second term as U.S. president begins in a month. High on his priority list, as per his statements, is initiating a ceasefire in Ukraine followed by peace talks to end the war triggered by Russiaโs full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022. Trump has stated his intention to address this issue within the first days of his presidency.
The revolutionary situation in Georgia could reach its climax on December 29, influenced by two factors: external and domestic. The situation could escalate dramatically as mass demonstrations in support of Salome Zourabichvili continue. Protesters demand that Zourabichvili remain in office. The current government may resort to force to oust Salome Zourabichvili, potentially including her arrest.
There is still a little over a month to go before Donald Trump, elected to a second term on November 5, 2024, returns to the White House, but the outlines of the first โ100 daysโ of his policy, albeit at the declarative level, are already quite clear.
Western weapons and electronic components continue to surface in Russian military hardware deployed in Ukraine, despite ongoing international efforts to restrict Moscowโs access to advanced technology. Recent reports from both European and Ukrainian investigative sources indicate that key Western-manufactured parts, including microchips and optical systems, have been identified in Russian unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and other military equipment used in the war.
Vladimir Putinโs second presidential term (2004โ2008) was marked by Moscowโs obvious desire to regain its status as a global superpower, which had been lost by the Soviet Union as a result of its defeat in the Cold War. The point of official departure from the former policy of open partnership with Western countries and close cooperation with NATO was the so-called 2007 Munich Speech of the Russian President and the invasion of Georgia that followed in August 2008.
In November 2024, the PSCRP program at the BESA Center published analytical materials covering three subregions of the post-Soviet area, namely, Central Asia, โthe Westโ (focusing this time on Moldova, Ukraine, and Russia), and the South Caucasus.
Recent events in the UAE and Central Asia show that Iran is again boosting recruitment of individuals from former Soviet republics for various purposes, including terrorist attacks and intelligence-gathering activities. Tehran plans to use these individuals directly against Israeli "targets" this time.
In the first decade of independence, Ukraine was quite distinctly divided into a number of regions, which differed greatly from each other in terms of ethno-identification and linguistic composition: Western, Central, Southern and Eastern Ukraine. Outside of Western Ukraine, addressing strangers in Ukrainian by default in both official and everyday communication was not the norm.
Kazakhstan refuses to join BRICS, an organization that Russia (and to some extent China) sees as an alternative to the Western-centric world order. Clearly, such a decision inevitably invites retaliatory pressure from Russia. To offset this to some extent, and for a number of other pragmatic reasons, Kazakhstan continues to actively participate in BRICS+ activities.