Kyiv’s western allies continue to express concern over the buildup of Russian troops on the border with Ukraine (see EDM, November 8, 29). US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States was “concerned about reports of atypical Russian military activity” (Voice of America—Russian... MORE

In the past several weeks, relations between Moscow and Washington nosedived, with multiple overlapping potential crises and increasingly toxic rhetoric aggravating an already dangerous situation. The Ukrainian crisis has been simmering to one degree or another since Russia took over Crimea in 2014 and sponsored... MORE

On November 26, the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan met for the second time since the end of the Second Karabakh War (September 27–November 9, 2020). The meeting took place at the initiative of the Russian government in a similar way to the last trilateral... MORE

Although Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov had assured everyone three years ago that the administrative border between Chechnya and Ingushetia had been resolved once and for all (TASS, December 8, 2018), the issue has found a way to resurface in recent weeks. Only this time, the... MORE

Ukraine is actively preparing to implement new legislation in the field of Territorial Defense (Armyinform.com.ua, November 2)—namely, the Law of Ukraine “On the Fundamentals of National Resistance,” which was signed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last July (President.gov.ua, July 29). This Law stipulates that Ukraine’s... MORE

On November 15 and 17, Angela Merkel, the outgoing chancellor of Germany, telephoned Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka (RBC, November 17). While, on November 14 and 16, Belarus’s Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei had two phone conversations with Josep Borrell, the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. While Kyiv, Berlin and Paris pursue (with varying degrees of intensity, frantically in Kyiv’s case) a high-level “Normandy” meeting as a goal for its own sake, without conditions or a clear agenda, Moscow is setting maximalist conditions for... MORE

The extrajudicial murder of a local Pamiri activist by state security police in the mountainous and impoverished Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast of Tajikistan has sparked violent protests in that region’s capital, Khorog. The mass demonstrations have so far claimed at least three other lives and left... MORE

Last September, long-brewing strains between Iran and Azerbaijan reached an unprecedented level, resulting in the deployment of troops and large-scale military drills by both sides. The most immediate trigger was the Azerbaijani authorities’ arrest of two Iranian truck drivers on Armenia’s Goris–Kapan highway (which partially... MORE

Russian diplomacy is testing its rogue-state practices on its Western diplomatic counterparts, and finds them malleable. On November 17, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov unilaterally publicized the confidential messages recently exchanged between himself and his German and French counterparts, Heiko Maas and Jean-Yves Le Drian,... MORE