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.

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

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/...

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

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 🇷🇴

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

"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 👇

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

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.

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!

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...

Highly recommended job opening for a data journalist at Deutsche Welle jobs.dw.com/Vacancies/22... Small but growing team, great for #rstats folks. Check out some of their work: dw.com/data

Belated announcement that I have finally released an openly-licensed collection of textual datasets extracted from Russia's main government websites. Yearly update expected. tadadit.xyz/posts/2024-1...

Thrilled to finally share the programme of Asiac's annual conference. It's really fantastic to see such a great line-up of scholars who will be sharing their insights on the Caucasus and Central Asia. See you in Venice in less than a month! en.asiac.net/2024/11/14/a...

End of the year is near, yet no arrangements about provision of Russian gas to Transnistria are in place. In my latest, I argue that Tiraspol should assume responsibility, and that Chișinău and EU should consider how the status quo may soon become untenable www.ispionline.it/en/publicati... #Moldova

Many important points in the recent Foreign Affairs piece by @gavinwilde.bsky.social et al. "Don’t Hype the Disinformation Threat" www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-fede... Sharing some of the same concerns, here's a book chapter I wrote: www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-... (open access)

New post out about Prigozhin's audio files, transcribed. Post is methodological, but... if you read his spoken words transcribed and see just how unhinged his criticism of Russia's military leadership was, you may also understand how lack of rebuff was interpreted as support from the Kremlin.