Vladimir (Ze’ev) Khanin is a professor of political science and heads the Post- Soviet Conflicts Research Program at the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies, Bar-Ilan University, Israel. He is the author/editor of nine academic books, including, most recently, The Jews of Contemporary Post-Soviet States (2023) and Russian Speaking Jews as a Political Body: A Global Perspective (co-edited with Olaf Glöckner, 2025). Petr Oskolkov is a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Communication and the Department of Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science, Ariel University, and an affiliated researcher at the Post-Soviet Conflicts Research Program, Begin- Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Bar-Ilan University, Israel.

• 1: Introduction: Ethnicity, Modern Warfare, and the Post-Soviet Political Practice, Petr Oskolkov and Vladimir (Ze’ev) Khanin 2: Russia’s New War Nationalism: Putin’s Regime and Z-Nationalists, Jules Sergei Fediunin 3: Development and Transformation of the Ethno-Linguistic Factor in the Context of the Full-Scale Russian-Ukrainian War, Anatoliy Romanyuk and Vitaliy Lytvyn 4: Patronage in Peril: The war in Ukraine as a gamechanger for the Eurasian de facto states, Helge Blakkisrud 5: Transnistrian settlement in the context of the formation of a new European security architecture, Anatolii Dirun 6: Potential for Inter-Ethnic Conflicts in the North Caucasus, Velvl Chernin 7: Peace narratives in the South Caucasus: The case of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Anna Ayvazyan 8: Russia’s pressure and evolution of multi-vector foreign policies of Central Asian states in the period of the war in Ukraine, Andrey Kazantsev and Svetlana Medvedeva 9: Ethnically Motivated Electoral Participation in the Baltic States: Preventing or Stimulating Conflicts?, Petr Oskolkov 10: Russia and the Israel-Hamas War: An Assessment of The First Six Months, Robert O. Freedman 11: Jewish Factor in the Age of Military Conflicts in the Post-Soviet Space: Identity, Loyalty and Antisemitic Tropes, Vladimir (Ze’ev) Khanin 12: Conclusion, Petr Oskolkov and Vladimir (Ze’ev) Khanin