Mid-Afternoon Map: Playing 3D Backgammon with Putin

Welcome to Mid-Afternoon Map, our exclusive members-only newsletter that provides a cartographic perspective on current events, geopolitics, and history from the Caucasus to the Carolinas. Subscribers can look forward to interesting takes on good maps and bad maps, beautiful maps and ugly ones — and bizarre maps whenever possible. *** Anti-Western ideology and geopolitical necessity may be the main factors uniting the Russian and Iranian regimes. But there’s also an unexpected preference for backgammon. Vladimir Putin, of course, is regularly described as a chess master, deftly outmaneuvering his checkers-playing opponents in op-ed after op-ed. Putin, for his part, has leaned into the