Marren Haneberg

Protests in Tbilisi ignited in Juneafter Russian lawmaker Sergei Gavrilov, deputy of the Russian State Duma, sat in the Georgian parliamentary speaker’s seat and addressed the audience in Russian. Protesters were not only angry about the Kremlin’s overreach into Georgia, but also with the Georgian Dream Party, which protesters claim has failed to adequately protect the country from Russian aggression. “The Russia factor was the trigger for this crisis, but it was not the cause,” rather the breaking point was “very polarized domestic politics in which the opposition plays the Russian card to discredit the government” according to Georgia expert Thomas de Waal (Higgins).

On October 9, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed a presidential decree granting former president Nursultan Nazabayev power to veto appointees to a majority of government leadership positions (5). This decree forbade Tokayev from unilaterally appointing “cabinet ministers, heads of various security forces and regional governors.” Tokayev will still maintain control over cabinet minister appointments in the “defense, internal affairs and foreign affairs” departments (4). The decree granted Nazarbayev “a consultative role in the appointments in his capacity as chairman of the Security Council” (4). Tokayev will need to consult Nazarbayev on appointees for all subordinate bodies, including the Kazakh domestic intelligence agency (KNB), foreign intelligence agency, the central bank, and even the head of Tokayev’s own security detail (1).

An August 8 nuclear accident in Nyonska, Russia is the result of Russia’s nuclear expansion, which Russia President Vladimir Putin officially announced in March 2018. This accident, along with the INF Treaty’s collapse in February 2019, show that the United States needs to examine its current nuclear policies and set new objectives to match the evolving global order. Its two objectives need to be global non-proliferation and improving security and prosperity across the globe.

Abkhazia’s elections headed to a run-off after a tie on August 25. The run-off contest was held on September 8 between incumbent Raul Khajimba and opposition candidate Alkhas Kvitsinia. Khajimba received 47.3 percent of the vote, beating out Kvitsinia’s 46.17 percent. Kvitsinia’s team disputed the results over Article 19 from the law “On the Election of the President of the Republic of Abkhazia,” which “ambiguously describes the protocol” to determine the winner of a second-round election (1). His argument—which Abkhazia’s supreme court struck down—was that the law requires the winner to receive over 50 percent of the vote.

A nuclear explosion rocked an offshore platform in the White Sea on August 8, killing five nuclear scientists and two Defense Ministry employees. The following weekend, the Kremlin only provided small details and contradictory information, an approach which added to the suspicion surrounding the incident. Finally, on August 12, Vyacheslav Solovyov, scientific director of the Russian Federal Nuclear Center revealed that these scientists were working on “small-sized energy sources using radioactive fissile materials” at the Nyonoksa military range (Smith). Rosatom, Russia’s nuclear agency, later divulged that the nuclear system included “isotope power sources within a liquid propulsion system” (Smith).

In a “significant” military buildup over the past 18 months, Russia has increased its troops, aircraft, and weapons in Crimea and improved its Soviet bases and S-400 anti-aircraft systems (13). One U.S. official described Defense One’s satellite imagery analysis of the region “a deliberate and systematic buildup of [Russian] forces on the peninsula” (1).

In July’s snap parliamentary elections, Ukrainian President President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s Servant of the People Party secured a majority with 91 percent of the vote counted. Ukraine has a mixed-party system; half of Verkhovna Rada’s seats are determined by party lists and the other half by “first-past-the-post constituency races” (6). Servant of the People’s showing in both races positions Zelenskiy to push his reforms forward in Ukraine. Winning 129 of 199 constituencies and 122 of 199 party seats, the election results mark the first time “in Ukraine’s post-independence history that a party obtains a majority in the parliament—the Verkhovna Rada” (6).

Thousands of protesters took to the streets after Russian lawmaker Sergei Gavrilov, deputy of the Russian State Duma, sat in the Georgian parliamentary speaker’s seat and addressed the audience in Russian. Gavrilov was there as president of the Interparliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy (IAO), “a body set up by the Greek parliament in 1993 to foster relationships between Christian Orthodox lawmakers” (Antidze). Protests cut IAO meetings short.

Kazakhstan held elections on June 9. For the first time in the former Soviet country’s history, the ballot did not include Nursultan Nazarbayev, who reigned as president since Kazakhstan’s 1991 creation. Kassym-Jomart Tokayev won the election with 70.9% of the vote. Amirzhan Kossanov, the main opposition candidate, came in a distant second at 16.2%, and Daniya Yespayeva, Kazakhstan’s first female presidential candidate, came in third at 5.05% (Vesterbye).