Giorgio Comai

Russia in the South Caucasus: two factors explaining what has changed - Osservatorio Balcani Caucaso Transeuropa Russia’s influence in the South Caucasus has decreased in recent years. Well beyond Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and long-term trends, two factors in particular help understanding why things have chan...

2. The South Caucasus has long been central to Russia’s imperial imagination. Under late Putinism, this is not any more the case.

www.balcanicaucaso.org/en/cp_articl...

Russia and the South Caucasus: why things have changed, really? Two factors in particular help understanding why things have changed, well beyond Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and long-term trends:

1. The foreign policy of countries in the South Caucasus has long been conflict-centred. Not any more.

Right. I appreciate that "DA" sounds cool, but it's still ridiculous in context. Yes, some former DA (as in "Demnitate si Adevarul", not PPDA) went with PAS, previously prominent DA figure Andrei Năstase tried it alone even in a proportional system, got 0.85% of the vote and was not elected.

Partidul „surpriză” al alegerilor din Republica Moldova. Liderul său are legături cu Rusia, dar și cu George Simion Partidul Politic „Alternativa Acasă” (PPDA), condus de Vasile Costiuc, candidatul susținut de liderul AUR, George Simion, este pe locul al patrulea, cu 5,68 %, după centralizarea a peste 90 la sută di...

and yet, here we are. adevarul.ro/stiri-extern...

The “Russian Hawks” and the Kremlin Previously marginal revanchist intellectuals have been producing grandiose ideological theorisations, that are now at the core of state-sanctioned narratives legitimising Russia’s invasion of Ukraine....

And again, link to my own piece @balcanicaucaso.org in English - www.balcanicaucaso.org/eng/Areas/Ru... - and in Italian - www.balcanicaucaso.org/aree/Russia/...

The Rise of the Russian Hawks Cambridge Core - European Studies - The Rise of the Russian Hawks

Juliette Faure's book: doi.org/10.1017/9781... - and a recent article doi.org/10.1017/eis....

Additional references:

updated official release on @discussdata.bsky.social, with even more ways to explore Zavtra's archive: doi.org/10.48320/EF3...

And then, worth noticing that for the group Faure calls the "hawks", what really matters is Russia's domestic cleansing, awakening, and rejuvenation. As the "hawks" themselves clarify, it is the ongoing top-down revolution within Russia that matters most to them: "Ukraine is just a pretext".

But I also question how much does ideology really matter for understanding the contours of what a plausible negotiated solution to the ongoing war would look like. Ideology is used to legitimise the Kremlin's choices: it may shape the language used to express them, but it hardly constrains policy.

The “Russian Hawks” and the Kremlin Previously marginal revanchist intellectuals have been producing grandiose ideological theorisations, that are now at the core of state-sanctioned narratives legitimising Russia’s invasion of Ukraine....

In my latest article - www.balcanicaucaso.org/eng/Areas/Ru... I explore how some of my own findings confirm the centrality of the ideological circles at the centre of Juliette Faure's excellent book,"The Rise of the Russian Hawks: Ideology and Politics from the Late Soviet Union to Putin’s #Russia"

"gli accordi di pace diventano ostaggi dei mutamenti geopolitici e rischiano di degenerare in un preludio a nuovi conflitti, sfollamenti di massa e guerre prolungate."

Ora anche in italiano su @balcanicaucaso.org l'importante contributo di @olesyavart.bsky.social

Nagorno-Karabakh and the Collapse of Russia’s Peacekeeping Mission: What Weak Mandates and Absent Guarantees Can Teach Us - Conflict and Civicness Research Blog The recent failure of Russia’s peacekeeping mission in the South Caucasus underscores the necessity of a clear and robust mandate backed by coalition guarantees and aligned with international principl...

Important (and timely!) contribution by Olesya Vartanyan:
> "Nagorno-Karabakh and the Collapse of Russia’s Peacekeeping Mission: What Weak Mandates and Absent Guarantees Can Teach Us"

blogs.lse.ac.uk/crp/2025/07/...

Picking your battles. Novaya Europe analysed almost 40,000 protests to see how Russia’s war in Ukraine has changed civil society — Novaya Gazeta Europe Why don’t Russians protest? Politicians, political scientists and sociologists have all asked the question since the war began. But while the Kremlin has a well-oiled repressive machine in place for d...

Interesting quantitative approach by Novaya Gazeta, although data are not published along with the article:
> "Novaya Europe analysed almost 40,000 protests to see how Russia’s war in Ukraine has changed civil society"
novayagazeta.eu/articles/202...
#Russia

Why there shouldn’t be expectations about any breakthrough in the negotiations with Ukraine in Istanbul?

In his famous Odnako programme on Russia’s First Channel, Leontyev explains:
#Russia

Russia and the “root causes” of the conflict – tadadit.xyz

What are the "root causes" of the conflict with Ukraine according to Russia?

My latest structured analysis shows that in Kremlin-speech as of early 2025 they do not effectively relate to Ukraine, but rather to the world order and Russia's place in it: tadadit.xyz/posts/2025-0... #Russia

As Romanians flock to the polls, time to bring back my quantitative analysis showing the incredible density of Romanian polling stations in Italy:

half of Italian residents could drive to a Romanian polling station in less than 35 minutes.

codebase.giorgiocomai.eu/2019/11/26/o... #Romania 🇷🇴

Perché Kyiv non può risolvere le “radici del conflitto” Nessun tipo di concessione unilaterale ucraina, men che meno territoriale, potrebbe risolvere quelle che Mosca considera le radici profonde del conflitto: ristabilire attraverso la guerra lo status…

Nessun tipo di concessione unilaterale ucraina, men che meno territoriale, potrebbe risolvere quelle che Mosca considera le radici profonde del conflitto: ristabilire attraverso la guerra lo status della Russia sia a livello regionale che globale. Un’analisi

"Accepting that no amount of plausible concessions from Kyiv would to put an end to the conflict is a necessary premise for more substantive policy debates in Europe and elsewhere."

"Western quiescence to Russia’s demands and Moscow’s neo-imperial design to control Ukraine, and indeed subsume it in the Russian cultural and political space along with Belarus, are inextricably intertwined, as one set of objectives cannot be achieved without the other."

"Ukraine, of course, remains central to Russia’s interests. But [in Russia's] vision, once Western geopolitical ambitions and weapons are removed from Ukraine, Ukraine would inevitably fall back within the Russian political and cultural space where it naturally belongs."

"If the “root causes” of the conflict lie in Russia’s relations with the West, no amount of unilateral Ukrainian concessions – least of all territorial concessions – would lead to a satisfactory outcome for Russia. Putin’s desired outcome cannot possibly stem from a decision taken in Kyiv."

Why Kyiv cannot possibly fix the ‘root causes’ of the conflict No amount of unilateral Ukrainian concessions would address what Russia considers the ‘root causes’ of the conflict. An analysis

"No amount of unilateral Ukrainian concessions would address what Russia considers the ‘root causes’ of the conflict."

My latest: www.balcanicaucaso.org/eng/Areas/Uk... #Ukraine #Russia

This is a really unique & rich longitudinal dataset on #corruption in #Ukraine, that allows for analyzing developments and trends over 1.5 decades! I recommend all scholars working on this topic checking this outstanding dataset 👇

Process text with Ollama, retrieve structured results, cache them locally in DuckDB. Process text with Ollama, store results in DuckDB.

Package: `quackingllama`. Basically, a llama that quacks like a duck (or, more technically, a package that relies on `Ollama` for interacting with LLMs, and on DuckDB for caching results). - giocomai.github.io/quackingllama/ #rstats

Analysing Russian news via Telegram, processing them with open LLMs – tadadit.xyz Testing alternatives for investigating public discourse.

New post, in which I indulge in exploring categorisation of text with open LLMs, and along the way incidentally develop an R package to facilitate relevant workflows.

Analysing Russian news via Telegram, processing them with open LLMs - tadadit.xyz/posts/2025-0...

Unfortunately, they didn't.

Transnistria: when buying time, make sure to use it wisely Russia’s gas subsidy – a key ingredient enabling Transnistria’s political economy – may remain in place for a couple more years, but its existence is based on increasingly shaky grounds. Chișinău is e...

Months ago, in reference to the impending crisis in Transnistria, @bervent.bsky.social and I argued that "when buying time,it's important to make sure to use it wisely."

Step 1: buy time
Step 2: use it wisely

We focused on step 2, but step 1 is of the essence
www.balcanicaucaso.org/eng/Areas/Mo...

Pics from sessions I chaired at the #ASIAC annual conference on the Caucasus and Central Asia held at the University of Venice. Such a great conference... www.asiac.net/eventi/asiac...
And Venice is something else, really.
I'll see you all there in 2025, same location, same time of the year!

Бадра Гунба: мы держим ситуацию под контролем Сухум. 9 декабря 2024. Апсныпресс. Вопросы выплаты заработной платы, обеспечения топливом, вызванные энергетическим кризисом, обсуждались на совещании, которое провел и.о. президента Бадра Гунба. И.о ...

News from Abkhazia: problems with paying salaries, energy crisis, closing schools one week early due to lack of heating apsnypress.info/ru/home/novo...

News from Transnistria: "state of economic emergency" declared
novostipmr.com/ru/news/24-1...

Thank you, Giorgio, for archiving this huge data collection with Discuss Data!
Scholars working on / interested in official #Russian discourse: this unique data collection provides a rich source with lots of material!
The data is available here: discuss-data.net/dataset/0578...