The “16+1” Initiative and Poland’s Disengagement from China
Belarus’s Relations With the West Receive Growing Scrutiny From Russian Military Intelligence
Hot Issue – Algeria’s Future and The Return of the Civilian Hidjâb to Algerian Politics
Words Matter: Belarus’s Self-Awareness on the Rise
Words matter. If only because they have the power to nudge an individual to see things from a wholly new angle. In that regard, the exchange between Mikhail Babich, Russia’s ambassador to Minsk, and the... MORE
Japan Represents Another Russian Failure in Asia
Although analysts in Russia, no doubt with official prompting, generally talk up the success of their country’s so-called pivot to Asia, in fact that policy has little to show for it after a decade of... MORE
Cossacks in Ukraine Back Kyiv Autocephaly; Cossacks in Russia Want It for Themselves
Cossacks in Ukraine and Russia are not the unquestioning soldiers of empire and repression that Moscow, Hollywood and the Western media routinely portray them as being. Certainly, some of the neo-Cossacks that President Vladimir Putin... MORE
Artillery Wars in Donbas Enter a New Stage
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko met with defense-industry engineers and designers in Zhytomyr, on March 11, and stressed that Ukraine “needs high-precision missile weapons capable of striking targets far into the rear of the enemy” (President.gov.ua,... MORE
Moldova’s Parliamentary Elections: One Silver Lining Amid Multiple Negative Trends (Part Two)
*To read Part One, please click here. Cleavages along ethno-linguistic and territorial lines underlying party-political divisions are an enduring characteristic of Moldova’s elections, and were again starkly evident in the parliamentary campaign just concluded, on... MORE
Fifth Anniversary of the Land Grab That Cost Russia Its Future
By mid-March 2014, Russian “little green men” took full control of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. And on March 18, President Vladimir Putin made a jubilant address to the Russian Federation Council (upper chamber of parliament) on... MORE
Russia Tightens Its Grip on Uzbekistan’s Oil and Gas Industry
A major challenge for Central Asia’s oil and natural gas industry has always been how to transport petroleum products from the landlocked region to global markets. That issue resurfaced last week (March 6) in Uzbekistan,... MORE
President Lukashenka’s Rhetoric and Belarus’s Future
President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s seven-hour marathon with reporters, on March 1 (see EDM, March 7), continues to reverberate in the media. Most of the discussions fall within one of four discernible themes. The first has to... MORE
Moscow Signals a Not-so-Subtle Tilt Toward Baku
Moscow’s recent decision to extradite a Talysh activist to Azerbaijan was a not-so-subtle sign that reinforced previous impressions the Russian government is tilting away from Armenia and toward Azerbaijan in the South Caucasus. The Kremlin... MORE