The fourteen years since Chernobyl left the map, the alliances and the armies very different from our own.
- Ukraine is a democracy and economically better off than in our world. It kept a share of the Soviet nuclear arsenal and of the Soviet (Black Sea) navy.
- Moldova's 3 states belong to Romania with an "autonomous region" state modifier. Romania is renamed the Union of Romania and Moldova (short: the Romanian Union).
- Transnistria stays independent.
- Kaliningrad is an independent state, outside the EU and the eurozone (it can join through its own tree or Germany's offer).
- Belarus Lukashenko's communist dictatorship (Revolutionary).
- Yugoslavia Milosevic is still in power; the current borders are right.
- Greece and Turkey the border didn't change, but border clashes still happen.
- Iraq Saddam lost Kuwait but is still in power; Russia guarantees Iraq.
- European Defence Union (a faction led by Germany): the Cologne core - Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Every member is also in the EU and the eurozone. The other EU states (Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Poland, Czechia, the Baltics, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Finland) can be invited through the EDU joint focus branch, at a cost in Union cohesion; Greece, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary are in neither: Greece is outside the EU.
- NATO is the USA, the UK and Canada.
- Hong Kong is still British (no 1997 handover).
- Japan with NATO reduced to three, Washington wants a much stronger Japanese ally and presses Tokyo to remilitarise. Article 9 was repealed by referendum on 3 May 1998, and Japan has had two years of rearmament since (5 armoured, 8 mechanised and 14 infantry divisions; 4 carriers; 800 fighters). The public is still largely pacifist, and the forces are still called the Self-Defence Forces.
- Ukraine's president is Vyacheslav Chornovil (Rukh), the Soviet-era dissident who led the independence movement (in our world he died in a 1999 car crash).
- Chechnya (the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, President Aslan Maskhadov) is independent and at war with Russia (the Second Chechen War, since 1997).
- Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh are not independent - the Caucasus left the USSR peacefully, so there were no breakaway wars; they belong to Georgia and Azerbaijan.
- The UK spends more on defence than in our world: a navy and air force comparable to Russia's.
- No Eurofighter the UK fields a national fighter developed from the BAe EAP; Germany and Italy fly the Rafale.
- Taiwan is guaranteed by both the UK and the USA.
- CIS a Russian-led bloc; communist Belarus is not a member.
- Countries the timeline leaves better off get stronger industry and militaries.