When Vladimir Putin calls Ukraine an “artificial state,” he is largely projecting Russia’s own problems onto it. After all, the considerations that produced Russia’s current borders aren’t exactly transparent.
The Georgian Dream party is stoking hopes among ordinary Georgians about the return of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Yet without Moscow’s approval, it’s impossible to imagine substantive negotiations taking place.
A central bank digital currency could provide Russia with an alternative to the SWIFT international payment system from which it has been cut off, but the digital ruble has a long way to go before it enters mainstream circulation.
Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Maksim Samorukov, a fellow at Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, and by Paula Erizanu, a prominent writer and journalist from Chisinau who writes for Financial Times, The Guardian and The New York Times, to discuss the upcoming presidential election in Moldova and what leverage Moscow still has to interfere in Moldova’s path toward the EU.
As Moldovans prepare to go to the polls on Oct. 20, it looks like another round of the familiar geopolitical standoff between Russia and the West over the countries in Moscow’s former empire and sphere of influence.
The Russian regime increasingly resembles the gerontocracy that ran the late Soviet Union, with elderly officials replacing other elderly officials, and some starting to die on the job.
While the prospect of a full-scale war between Iran and Israel is a worry for the Kremlin, it could also have a significant financial upside for Russia.
