Bougainville is likely to play a surprisingly significant role in the tussles between China and the US in the Pacific region. Lucas Knotter analyses the future of this breakaway island.

Declaring that Russia would annex four regions of Ukraine, which the West rejects as illegal, the Russian president accused the U.S. and its allies of ‘despotism’ and ‘Satanism’.

The Kremlin wants to return to the age when Russia dominated its neighbors across Eurasia. Instead, it’s driving them away.

August 2022 is the 30th anniversary of the beginning of the war between the Georgians and the Abkhazians in the decades-long dispute over ownership of the small territory known to the autochthonous Abkhazians as Apsny and to the Georgians as apxazeti. This project aims to bring together different points of view on Abkhazia.

Panic has subsided — for now, at least — after a border dispute last week fueled fears that Kosovo and Serbia might be careening toward another war on European soil. Yet, locals downplay such possibilities. What happened, and what to expect next?

From her first days in Congress, Nancy Pelosi was willing to confront China’s leaders. As she looked toward her legacy, the California Democrat was not about to back down this time.

As the ripples of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pulse outward, they have left one region especially volatile: the South Caucasus. The Ukrainian conflict has paradoxically raised the likelihood of both further fighting and a negotiated peace in this area between the Caspian and Black Seas.

How the Western Sahara conflict is fuelling new tensions between Morocco and Algeria.

On September 24 last year, amid the latest flare-up in tensions between Serbia and its former province, Kosovo, a Kosovo Albanian businessman called Burim Piraj took to Facebook with a call to boycott goods made in Serbia.

As climate change opens up the Arctic for transit and exploration, Russia has increasingly militarized the region. The U.S. is preparing a more aggressive presence of its own.

In 2027, the world will see the first newly independent country since South Sudan in 2011. Bougainville, an autonomous province in Papua New Guinea (PNG), voted almost unanimously for independence in a 2019 referendum.

For the Kremlin, NATO’s 1999 war against Serbia is the West’s original sin—and a humiliating affront that Russia must avenge.

Vladimir Putin claims to be defending populations in the Donbas. In fact, the Kremlin-controlled statelets there are dominated by military rule and repression of organized labor — a troubling indicator of the future Putin has in store for neighboring regions.

Richard Norton-Taylor flags the UK’s dispute with Mauritius over sovereignty of the Chagos archipelago in the Indian Ocean, where the largest island hosts a major U.S. bomber base.

The differences between the situations with Russia and Ukraine and China and Taiwan are significant. There is one concept that unites Putin on Ukraine and Xi on Taiwan, however: The idea that history and geography can trump self-determination and democracy, no matter what.

There is a political crisis in South Ossetia, the reason for which was the issue of delimitation and demarcation of the border with Georgia. The crisis around the border actually turned into a conflict between representatives of the previous and current authorities.

A visual guide to recent troop deployments, as tensions escalate.

The development of both Donetsk and Transnistria have a strong tendency to be seen as vessels for Russia’s search for influence in a Post-Soviet world. Yet these states are just as much the result of local context and the geopolitical storm that surrounds them. However, whatever the causes of their tribulations, the burden of international abandonment falls on the people in these nations.

One year after the war in Nagorno-Karabakh, there is nothing that would carry even a faint promise of reconciliation and co-existence.

Washington has strategic, economic, and normative reasons for safeguarding the island from Chinese coercion.

Rarely has an election in a small post-Soviet country been watched so closely.

Russian peacekeepers have radically reshaped the region. An analysis by Tom Mutch.

Thirty years ago, on May 18th, 1991, the Republic of Somaliland declared independence. This separation from Somalia certainly was a bold move back then. For over a decade it was impossible to predict what would really come out of the secession. But today it is clear: Somaliland is one of the most stable de facto states in the world, nonetheless, it is still not internationally recognized.

Rioting, masked protestors, buses set alight, attacks against police officers and journalists—scenes that were once all too familiar have become a reality once again on the streets of Northern Ireland. Is a return to violence an inevitable reality?

What are the motives and instruments that both EU and Russia exploit in their power projections towards Transnistria? And how do de facto state authorities tackle possible tensions emerging from externally imposed choices? A research paper by Eiki Berg and Kristel Vits of the University of Tartu (Estonia).

With the election of the conservative Turkish Cypriot Ersin Tatar, many anticipate a hardening of Turkish Cypriots’ position in negotiations over the final status of the island. An analysis by the Glasgow University lecturer Adrian Florea.

The long-term reasons for the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh are well known. But what caused such an extensive military intervention as the one we are seeing these days, over 25 years after the ceasefire? And what can and should be done now? An analysis by Giorgio Comai.

International relations and sport have become increasingly intertwined, with sport and sports events being used for various diplomatic and political goals. Yet, membership of FIFA and the IOC is largely organised along lines of sovereign statehood. What about CONIFA, the alternative for contested territories? An academic analysis by Ramesh Ganohariti and Ernst Dijxhoorn.

De facto states have been a constant presence in the postwar international order. Some survive for a long period of time. Others are forcefully reintegrated into their parent states, or disappear as a result of peacemaking. Only a few successfully transition to full statehood. What explains these very different outcomes? Adrian Florea of the University of Glasgow pinpoints four crucial factors.

In March 2014, the Crimean Peninsula declared independence from Ukraine, announcing the formation of the Republic of Crimea. However, just two days later the new republic was annexed by Russia. In this video, James Ker-Lindsay (London School of Economics) explains why Crimea had to claim to be an independent state before it could be incorporated into the Russian Federation.