Sources (IISS; Just Security; The Jamestown Foundation)
Armenia
(Maximilian Hess – IISS) On 7 June 2026, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan won re-election to a third term in Armenia’s parliamentary elections. Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party secured 64 of 105 seats in the legislature, giving him a mandate to push on with two major foreign policy shifts. Firstly, Pashinyan seeks to finalise a peace deal with Azerbaijan and to normalise ties with Türkiye, a process combined with abandoning nationalist claims to the Karabakh territory after Azerbaijan regained full control of this region in 2023. Secondly, Pashinyan has vowed to seek further integration with the European Union, despite major economic pressure from Russia, with which Yerevan is formally in a customs union as well as a mutual-defence treaty organisation – the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), respectively. Pashinyan’s electoral success is remarkable. An erstwhile journalist, carried to power on the back of an anti-corruption protest movement in 2018, his re-election despite military defeat and the loss of control over Karabakh – a highly emotive issue in Armenia – is a near unprecedented feat. He was first re-elected in 2021, just seven months after Azerbaijani forces retook more than two-thirds of Armenian-held territory in and around the region. The second time was less than three years after Azerbaijani forces retook all of it, displacing 100,000–120,000 ethnic Armenians. Moreover, Pashinyan’s victories have come despite him lacking the military credentials and historic role in leading operations in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War of 1988–94, or the Russia-linked wealth of his leading electoral rivals. – Armenia’s election and peace in the South Caucasus
(Luke Rodeheffer – The Jamestown Foundation) The Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) is continuing to pursue free trade across member-states, but Armenia’s membership is in doubt following the Armenian Prime Minister’s pro-Western Civil Contract party’s victory in the country’s June 7 parliamentary elections. Trade volume among member states remains low for a free trade bloc, and the economic effects of Armenia’s potential exit would likely be negligible for the EAEU as a whole. Moscow’s and other member states’ responses to the possibility of Armenia leaving the bloc have highlighted that the EAEU is as much a political project as an economic one. – Moscow Concerned About Armenia’s Wavering EAEU Membership – Jamestown
Central Asia
(Paul Globe – The Jamestown Foundation) Water shortages in Central Asia have become so severe that they can no longer be resolved by water-sharing agreements between the so-called “water surplus” upstream countries of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and the “water short” downstream countries. This crisis is undermining not only growth and stability in the region’s countries but also regional cooperation, and is increasingly involving neighboring countries, from whom the region seeks water, threatening massive refugee flows if it does not get it.
For the foreseeable future, the need for water and the inability of the Central Asian countries to solve this problem on their own are thus likely to be a major cause of conflict within the region and between its countries and the People’s Republic of China, Russia and Afghanistan. – Growing Water Shortages in Central Asia Threaten Region and its Neighbors – Jamestown
Japan
(Rupert Schulenburg – IISS) At the March 2026 summit between United States President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae, both sides agreed to strengthen missile-defence cooperation with ambitions to ‘rapidly increase by fourfold’ production of SM-3 Block IIA missiles in Japan. This should help Tokyo’s broader effort to bolster its layered air- and missile-defence posture in response to a more demanding regional threat environment. Recent and planned enhancements span new deployments, capability upgrades and the development of systems designed to address high-speed, manoeuvring missile threats, alongside greater information sharing with partners. These measures are intended to enhance the Japan Self-Defense Forces’ (JSDF) ability to intercept enemy aircraft, ballistic and cruise missiles, as well as hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs). – Closing gaps: Japan’s evolving missile air- and missile-defence capabilities
Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT RevCon)
(Daniel Salisbury – IISS) From 27 April–22 May 2026, the 11th Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT RevCon) took place at the United Nations in New York. Slated to take place every five years since the NPT’s indefinite extension in 1995, the four-week summits are the culmination of the NPT-review cycle. The latest RevCon again failed to produce a consensus final document, therein highlighting the growing schism between nuclear-weapon and non-nuclear-weapon states, the two categories enshrined in the original NPT. The deadlock was due largely to the language surrounding Iran’s non-compliance, but efforts to reach consensus were further complicated by ongoing regional conflicts where nuclear facilities have been under attack – now in the Middle East as well as in Ukraine. – A nuclear order under strain?
Russia – China – Power of Siberia 2
(John C. K. Daly – The Jamestown Foundation) Shares of Gazprom dropped sharply after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s May visit to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) ended without progress on the Power of Siberia 2 natural gas pipeline. Gazprom lost about $1.4 billion in value on May 20 alone amid renewed doubts over Russian access to PRC gas markets. Russia is hoping to replace European markets for its natural gas—which largely closed after the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine—with the PRC’s. Gazprom currently relies on Power of Siberia 1 to deliver its natural gas to the PRC, but it lacks the capacity to replace the volume of gas that flowed to Europe, intensifying pressure to reach a deal with the PRC on Power of Siberia 2. The PRC is pushing for near-domestic gas prices and flexible volumes, while Russia insists on higher prices and “take-or-pay” guarantees. Even if an agreement is reached, Power of Siberia 2 would take years to build, and PRC demand would not fully offset lost European gas revenues. – Putin’s PRC Visit Failed to Advance Power of Siberia 2 – Jamestown
Sudan
(Mutasim Ali and Yonah Diamond – Just Security) The conflict in Sudan is often described as a civil war between the government-backed Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). But the most consequential drivers sustaining the conflict are beyond Sudan’s borders, from foreign States to private military contractors, and the transnational smuggling and human trafficking networks, which have turned Sudan into a marketplace of violence. Foreign actors pursue their interests from abroad, while the Sudanese people bear the destruction. In its new report, Human Rights Watch (HRW) confirms earlier findings corroborated by other investigative organizations, including the Sentry and Conflict Insights, that the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) operation supplying arms and Colombian mercenaries to the RSF is linked to the highest levels of the UAE government. Abu Dhabi’s interest in Sudan reportedly includes ambitions to exploit the country’s natural resources and access to the Red Sea Port. The mercenary movements track many of the established Emirati arms supply lines to Darfur, as documented by the United Nations Panel of Experts, international investigators, and the intelligence community, demonstrating how entrenched these trafficking networks are. Throughout the conflict, the RSF has received a continuous supply of arms from the UAE, often airlifted under covert tactics such as disappearing radars or unrecorded takeoffs, particularly in the lead-up to major offensives and atrocities. Early on, the Emirati-sourced arms shipments originally flowed through Chad, but as international scrutiny increased, they were gradually rerouted and diversified through Sudan’s other neighboring countries. Many of these transit points are additionally linked to UAE financing or reportedly set up by UAE nationals in coordination with regional authorities. – Targeting the Transnational Sources of Sudan’s Violence
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