Prénom de l'expert

Pavel

Nom de l'expert

BAEV

The extraordinarily troublesome year 2020 tested many international institutions and bilateral ties, but few experienced sharper challenges than the complex relations between Russia and Turkey, which have a strong impact on crisis developments in Europe’s immediate neighborhood.

The struggle against terrorism is supposed to be one part of security policy in which Russia has every necessary capability and know-how, and its special services can draw on vast experience without encountering the legal and institutional constraints that often interfere with Western efforts.

Since the start of the Ukraine crisis in early 2014, the states of East Central Europe have become increasingly important targets of Russian economic, political and military pressure. Russia finds itself in the trajectory of geopolitical retreat on the Western “front”, and seeks to slow down this process by mobilizing every economic, political and military asset in East Central Europe, where various weak points in the European and Atlantic unity exist—and are typically overestimated by Moscow.

In the recent years Russia has made a significant effort in favor of modernizing its armed forces which allowed it to execute the swift annexation of Crimea in March 2014. 

Since summer 2009, instability in the eastern part of the North Caucasus has escalated, a security threat against which the Russian leadership cannot find a strategy. Despite a maximum-intensity counterinsurgency campaign, the rebels have been able to expand their support base, staging terrorist attacks in Moscow.