Russia Archive

On Sunday, Cyprus will hold runoff presidential elections between conservative candidate Nicos Anastasiades and the left-leaning Stavros Malas. The election will likely determine whether Cyprus, one of the eurozone’s economic trouble spots, will accept a bailout from the European Union in exchange for economic reforms or risk a bankruptcy that will aggravate the eurozone crisis. Anastasiades, the conservative, pro-bailout candidate, is favored to win. Demetris Christofias, the current president, has resisted meeting the tough terms of the bailout. The European Union, meanwhile, has not hidden its hopes for an Anastasiades victory. James Ker-Lindsay, a senior research fellow who studies the […]

The list of of nations with nuclear weapons continues to grow. First it was the United States and the Soviet Union. They were soon followed by the United Kingdom, France then China. Later, India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea joined. South Africa was a member of the club for a while, before abandoning its program. Iran will become a nuclear power some day, even if the United States or Israel postpones it a bit with an attack. A growing number of other states could build nuclear weapons in short order if they wanted to, including South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Brazil […]

With only days to go before Armenia’s Feb. 18 presidential election, all signs point to a victory for incumbent President Serzh Sargsyan. Should he be re-elected as expected, Armenia will most likely maintain its status quo, which saw Yerevan open modestly to the West and Euro-Atlantic initiatives but ultimately remain bound to its longstanding alliance with Moscow. Sargsyan is likely not only to win the election handily but also to easily clear the 50 percent threshold required to prevent a second-round runoff. With Armenia’s opposition badly fractured and handicapped by the noncandidacies of two of the most credible opposition figures […]