From the Editor

The multitude and diversity of the new military conflicts that have captured the international scene in recent years have produced strong reverberations over the way Russia foreign policy has been built. In an unstable geopolitical context, with increasingly strong and visible tensions in the international arena, Vladimir Putin’s election as President of the Russian Federation was a turning point, offering new meanings to security and defence concepts.

Five weeks after officially taking office, Joe Biden drew the attention of the daily news consumers through two moves he made in less than a day.
First, an air raid that targeted several locations of the pro-Iranian armed militias located at the Eastern border between Syria and Iraq.
The second was when, at his initiative, the US President had a phone conversation with King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud.

Popular narratives on Russia's geopolitical interests in the Balkans point to two rather divergent directions. Facts on the ground, however, do not support either.

From the Editor

The President and the Government of Ukraine are preparing to host a summit of heads of state and government, aiming to mobilize a more effective international response to Russia’s seizure of Crimea from Ukraine.

There are plenty of lessons to be learned from the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and the heavy financial burden it is likely to put on all EU Member States, but one stands out: European defence cooperation in general, and collaborative capability development in particular, are now more indispensable and urgent than ever before.

The year 1918 was for the Romanians a year of major political activities. At that time the Romanians lived in three different countries – the Kingdom of Romania, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Russian Empire, the classical example of a divided nation. The young Romanian state, that had witnessed the union between Moldavia and Wallachia, when Alexandru Ioan Cuza was elected the ruler of the two, proved it had intellectuals capable of taking political actions in the interest of their country. Placed on the banks of the Danube River, Romania came to be as a state also due to the fact that the Europeans developed an interest in the Danube and the Black Sea, and it could guarantee free passage at the River’s mouth – as stipulated by the Treaty of Paris, in 1856, following the Crimean War (1853-1856).

Professor Dr. Zlatko Hadžidedić - the founder and director of the Center for Nationalism Studies in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina - shared from his insight on nationalism as an ideology and its implementation in the Balkans, in the interview below.

Following the important victory of Maia Sandu against Igor Dodon in the runoff of the presidential elections on the November 12, 2020 the mandate of the president-elect faces major challenges, both domestic and foreign. Moldovan citizens and the Western partners of the Republic of Moldova expect the new administration to adopt sustainable reforms, combat corruption, develop the economy, recalibrate the relation with the Russian Federation, and, at the same time, intensify the democratisation and Europeanisation process.