Mid-February registered a remarkable sequence of international forums, whose participants debated and sought to counter Russia’s power politics in Europe and the Middle East. First, defense ministers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) had their regular meeting in Brussels (February 13-14) and then proceeded to the annual security conference in Munich (February 15-17). Meanwhile, the United States-sponsored conference in Warsaw on the Middle East (February 13-14) brought together a number of prominent politicians, including Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. Vice-President Michael Pence. Simultaneously, Russian President Vladimir Putin greeted his partners in managing the Syrian war – Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani – in Sochi.