It has again taken Ukraine many months to break down the domestic opposition of vested interests in order to qualify for much-needed international assistance. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently signed into law two key bills: one aimed at turning farmland into a sellable commodity, and the... MORE

On May 12, 2020, President Andrzej Duda approved the new Security Strategy of the Republic of Poland (“Strategia Bezpieczeństwa Narodowego”—SBN) (Bbn.gov.pl, May 12), which replaces long-outdated version from 2014 (Bbn.gov.pl, November 5, 2014). The SBN is the country’s most important strategic document regarding security and... MORE

Ukraine’s ethnic-Bulgarian minority is concentrated in the southwestern part of Ukraine’s Odesa province, an area often if somewhat inaccurately referenced as “Bessarabia.” It forms a triangle between the Dnister/Nistru River, the Danube Estuary and the Black Sea, adjacent to the Russian-controlled Transnistria, and bordering on... MORE

The parliament of Bulgaria has adopted a declaration criticizing Ukraine’s policy toward the Bulgarian minority in Odesa province (see EDM, May 26). This move might seem to indicate that Bulgaria is about to emulate Hungary or Romania, each of which, in its own way (Hungary... MORE

Western analysts tend to focus on the Iranian navy almost exclusively in terms of its ability to harass or block oil tankers coming through the Strait of Hormuz, an understandable perspective given the danger that Iran could disorder world oil markets if it was successful... MORE

President Donald Trump announced, on May 21, that the United States would be withdrawing from the 1992 Treaty on Open Skies, which permits reciprocated surveillance overflights of participating members’ military facilities as a confidence-building measure. The treaty depositary countries (Canada and Hungary) were sent official... MORE

Considering how front and center and ever present the novel coronavirus pandemic has been for months on end, it is rather stunning how the start of the presidential race in Belarus has managed, within only a week, to locally sideline news of the health crisis.... MORE

On May 21, mainstream Russian news agencies broke the story of the hospitalization of Chechnya’s strongman, Ramzan Kadyrov. These media outlet’s sources revealed that Kadyrov was flown from Grozny to Moscow on suspicion of his having contracted the novel coronavirus responsible for causing COVID-19. They... MORE

May 21 marked the understated birthday celebration of Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, already the longest serving in the post since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. But the occasion also unexpectedly provided a public forum for a discussion of the current direction of the... MORE

On April 10, the Azerbaijani parliament ratified and President Ilham Aliyev approved a law for laying a trans-Caspian fiber-optic cable across the bottom of the Caspian Sea between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan (President.az, April 10). The initial interstate agreement—“On the Organization of Activities by Communications Operators... MORE