Located in the very southeast of Europe, Kalmykia, a subject of the Russian Federation in the lower Volga region, has almost never been in the spotlight of the global community.
PSCRP
As the fighting in Gaza develops, Russia's position is becoming increasingly clear: Moscow almost openly supports Hamas as a satellite of Iran, Russia's closest partner in the Middle East. This significantly sets the current situation apart from the relatively balanced approach demonstrated by Moscow during, for instance, the IDF's Operation Protective Edge in 2014, and Russia’s subsequent policy of presenting itself as an “impartial mediator” between all participants in the Middle East conflict.
Currently, Russia is in the process of forming a new state ideology, one that holds conservative values. The Russian Orthodox Church plays a significant role within this ideology. Consequently, the political significance of conservative circles within the Russian Orthodox Church concerning the Jewish question is becoming pronounced.
After the Second Karabakh War (2020) and especially after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine (2022), France saw a number of new diplomatic opportunities opening up for it in the southern post-Soviet space as Russia's traditional influence waned.
It is no secret that the Russian authorities mobilized mostly people from the provinces for the war in Ukraine in an effort to avoid growing discontent in the capital cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg. But a number of other population groups experience the feeling of disproportionate use of their human resources for military purposes.
BESA Post-Soviet Conflicts Research Digest No. 1 (September-October 2023)
The Hamas attack on Israel triggered a wave of antisemitism in the South Caucasus and Central Asia. The root causes of this surge are similar: anti-Israeli propaganda in Russia (which is anti-liberal and anti-Western in nature) and in the Islamic world (usually of a specifically religious nature), as well as in the West (typically taking on an extreme leftist nature).
In the months after 21 September 2022, when the Kremlin announced military mobilization, nearly a million Russian citizens entered Kazakhstan; though, two-thirds had already left the country before January 2023. The reason for the unexpected rise in popularity of migration to the Central Asian state was that Russian citizens do not need a visa or even a “foreign travel” passport to go there.
Georgia is a very important element of Russia's connection with the global South, and in informational terms, working relations with Georgia are an extremely convenient element for Russian propaganda, unlike relations with Ukraine. The main goal of the Russian Federation in its relations with Georgia is to keep Georgia in the ecosystem of Russia's survival under sanctions.
The resulting IDF's Iron Swords Military Operation has caused, as usual, an outburst of anti-Semitism around the world. However, unlike previous military confrontations with terrorists, this time the world's anti-Semitic reaction to Israel's actions was not only much stronger, but also affected countries and regions that usually refrain from displaying violent anti-Israeli rhetoric and positions.