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On 28 April, 2010, during a business trip to Astrakhan on the Caspian, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin personally pushed the button to start the region's first drilling unit on the Korchagin platform. This moved Russia offshore in its sector of the Caspian and confirmed that the Kremlin was as determined as ever to remain within the raw-material paradigm; the nature of the political stimuli in the corridors of power became much clearer. It should be said that the rent-seeking angle throws the most typical features of Russia's political regime into bolder relief. Here I have examined the rent-seeking phenomenon of Russian power at various stages of post-communist development in the oil sphere, the country's key resource, and the correlation between the raw-material opportunities and the principles of political organization in Putin's Russia.

The oil pipeline projects overshadowed the conflict in South Ossetia from its very beginning. The TV audience was especially impressed by the picture of the Azpetrol tank cars burning somewhere in Georgia. The Caspian oil market promptly responded to the warfare: British Petroleum, the BTC operator, suspended oil pumping along this route; the same was done on the Baku-Supsa pipeline; and the Poti and Kulevi oil terminals were left idling. Later numerous surveys and analyses stressed the economic aspects and calculated the losses sustained by Azerbaijan and the Western oil companies. It seems that the political analysts were more concerned about how much the war cost Azerbaijan and British Petroleum in lost profit and how many million tons of oil did not reach the market than about anything else. As Azerbaijan and the BTC shareholders regained their lost profits, the issue gradually retreated into the background. This left the geopolitical effect of the events in the shadow. From the very beginning, however, the South Ossetian conflict had obvious global implications. In his article "La Lezione di Putin alla Casa Bianca," Lucio Caracciolo wrote: "The Georgian war not merely produced a colossal regional effect; it is helping to revise the global balance which, it seems, was firmly established late last century." Few of the analysts, however, tried to answer the question of whether the sides' geopolitical interests can be discerned in the figures of the losses and profits of those involved in the Caspian oil business. A positive answer suggests the question: What are these interests? Seen from this angle, the causes, both obvious and concealed, of the August war and the key stimuli this inspired in the sides become much clearer. Here I intend to reveal the nature of the geopolitical race for the energy and transportation resources of the Greater Caspian at all stages of its post-Soviet development and concentrate on the rapidly accelerating rivalry in the 21st century with its unexpected, yet logical, post-Tskhinval finale.

Seit einigen Jahren wendet sich Russland wieder stärker der Kaspischen Region zu und schenkt dabei insbesondere den Beziehungen zum Iran seine Aufmerksamkeit. Allerdings war die Eröff nung der BakuTifl is-Ceyhan-Pipeline im Jahre 2006 ein Schlag gegen die russische Hegemonie in Raum des Kaspischen Meeres, da durch sie das russische Monopol im Energietransport durchbrochen wurde. In Reaktion darauf verstärkt Russland seine Militärpräsenz und denkt gemeinsam mit dem Iran über die Schaff ung einer "Erdgas-OPEC" nach.

Seit einigen Jahren wendet sich Russland wieder stärker der Kaspischen Region zu und schenkt dabei insbesondere den Beziehungen zum Iran seine Aufmerksamkeit. Allerdings war die Eröff nung der BakuTifl is-Ceyhan-Pipeline im Jahre 2006 ein Schlag gegen die russische Hegemonie in Raum des Kaspischen Meeres, da durch sie das russische Monopol im Energietransport durchbrochen wurde. In Reaktion darauf verstärkt Russland seine Militärpräsenz und denkt gemeinsam mit dem Iran über die Schaff ung einer "Erdgas-OPEC" nach.

The proposed work analyzes a monograph published in 2021 by Evgenii A. Markov, Doctor of Political Sciences, Professor of the Department of Social Communications and Media of Cherepovets State University. In the monograph, he made an attempt to explain the role and importance of the mass media in the communication system "the State – Mass Media – Society." The importance of the work under review lies in a comprehensive insight into the problems of transformation of communicative and informational relations between the state and society as well as factors that influenced the formation of the present-day system of interaction between the authorities and society, which generally allows not only seeing the ongoing political processes in proper perspective but also predicting their further development. The author's research interest has been associated with this problem for quite a while, and he devoted his new work to identifying the origins, traditions, and modern trends that influence the process of communicative interaction between the government institutions, mass media, and society in modern Russia.

The article studies the basic and complicated evolution of different approaches for investigating Russian post-Soviet Islamic transformation. The authors describe the logic and dynamic of scrutinizing such kind of problems as Islamic consciousness and Muslim institutes, relationships between Islam and ethnic political develoments, forms and manifestations of Islamic fundamentalism. In an effort to identify and assess the signs of post-Soviet Islamic revival, the Russian academic community has obviously been driven to despair. Especially since the tragedy of 9/11/2001 as a source of studying Islam as an evasive object. The main goal of this paper is the methodological innovation which consists in multilayered approach. The authors argue that changes of parameters and structure of post-Soviet policy is reflected in the change of format and unities of analysis. The paper examines the character of academic discussion about different understanding of such political phenomena as politization of Islam as well as bordering Islam in terms of multi-level methodology. This methodology could be able to clarify very complicated Islamic features: socio-territorial organization, communication, and the reproduction channels. It alone will help us explain changing Islam as a social and political enigma. In this paper the authors have correctly identified the phenomenon of Muslim regionalization as a situation under which the Islamic leaders concentrate on religious development at the local level. It is not the authors' aim to discuss the forms of Islamic existence and its religious-teaching component. The authors favor the wider approach typical of political science in which there is a component of Islamic studies. This analysis has demonstrated that the multi-layered approach to Islam, which identifies its viable segments, has a considerable heuristic potential. This approach helps to understand the inner dynamics of the Islamic development as a complex social and political phenomenon. This reconfirms the old truth that the deeper the analysis goes into the past the more integral an image of reality it acquires. (author's abstract)

In the post-9/11 world, energy resources have become the most coveted trophy, and force has become the main instrument, while national interests are prevailing over the hopes and illusions of the "democratic transit" of the 1990s. Russia and the United States are locked in rapidly accelerating rivalry over the Caspian's gas and gas pipelines (South Stream of Russia vs. Nabucco of the West). While at the turn of the 21st century, Russia did not have a trump card it could successfully use to oppose the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, later it armed itself with the South Stream to fight the "gas war." The two projects competed in the "dilemma of simultaneity" regime, which describes the dynamics of the struggle over several alternatives for the limited resources. The resultant "diversification race" started the European "pipeline war" of the 21st century. What triggered the race? Never before, even at the height of the Cold War, has the West been so vehemently determined to lower Europe's dependence on Soviet fuel; never before has the Caspian basin attracted the clashing political and economic interests of so many countries.

The Islamic community is a very complicated phenomenon with a lot of phenomenological features manifested in different spheres: the economy, socio-territorial organization, communication, and the reproduction channels. Some Russian academics believe that the possibilities offered by investigative neo-classicism, understood as "predominantly empirical studies of specific groups (trends, movements, schools, etc.) which appear and function in Islam as Islamic phenomena, should be tapped to help understand the phenomenon of Islam. We shall copy this approach-it alone will help us explain changing Islam as a social and political enigma. It should be said that certain analysts have correctly identified the phenomenon of Muslim regionalization as a situation under which the Islamic leaders concentrate on religious developments at the local level. We shall try to explain this phenomenon through the de-modernization conception. We regard the Islamic answer as part of society's crisis conscience.

The purpose of this work is to explore the ways of perception and analysis of geopolitical processes in the Caspian area. At the centre of the analysis is the nature of the intellectual efforts behind knowledge production and representation of the Caspian. This brings our study to the problem of geopolitical positioning of this mesoregion with the prospect of putting forward a new cognitive perspective. The article not only reveals the pernicious nature of the widespread explanatory cliches regarding the Caspian, but tries to answer the question whether it makes sense to talk about a separate Caspian region? If so, in what terms and within what explanatory model can it be explored? Based on the geopolitical significance of the region, this area can be defined as the "Great Caspian", located in the centre of the Eurasian continent. The driving forces behind the formation of the independent significance of this mesoregion are natural resources, trade and transport communications, geopolitical drivers and management of regional conflicts.

The article analyzes the public political reactions of the leaders of the European Union and the leading political forces of various European states regarding the Russian "Sputnik V" vaccine. The position of key European states in relation to the Russian vaccine are considered. This study is based on open sources and does not provide a comprehensive or complete overview of the available estimates. It focuses mainly on the problems of information support of political decisions regarding Russian means of combating the coronavirus pandemic. The refusal of the European Commission to recognize the Europeans' right to use the Russian "Sputnik V" vaccine suggests that ideological prejudice and protectionism are put ahead of pragmatism and public health.