The signing in January 2009 of the gas supply and transit contracts between Gazprom and Naftogaz marked a turning point in Russian-Ukrainian gas relations: yearly intergovernmental, last minute and non-transparent winter deals were replaced by a predictable, long term commercial relationship. 

Almost 20 years after Vladimir Putin's accession to the presidency in 2000, how should the Russian political system be defined?

With globalization weakening their borders and their sovereignty, are states now marginalized on the global stage?

The Arab Spring has shaken dysfunctional states that were built upon the recurrent use of violence.

The Egyptian presidential election of spring 2018 will, in all likelihood, result in Abdel Fattah El-Sisi maintaining power, given the tight control over the opposition.

Shortly after his inauguration in May 2017, the President of South Korea, Moon Jae-In, announced a major policy shift away from nuclear and coal power, and toward renewables and gas. This would have meant a complete U-turn from previous policies, considering that nuclear and coal produced 40% and 30% respectively of Korea’s total electricity in 2016.

In a matter of months, Luanda politics became unrecognizable. The reasons why, and the ways in which, João Lourenço, President of Angola since september 2017, proceeded to these substantial and unexpected changes will be analyzed in detail in the pages that follow. 

The paper examines the reasons for the poor state of relations between Russia and the United Kingdom, providing a brief historical and political account of why relations have deteriorated. The various options facing the UK after Brexit, and within this framework the ambiguity of current British foreign policy and diplomacy, are outlined.