On August 23, 2019, Georgian national and former Chechen rebel commander Zelimkhan Khangoshvili (40) was fired on by an assailant on a bicycle, in a Berlin public park. Khangoshvili died on the spot, shot twice in the head. German police quickly apprehended the suspected killer... MORE

The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) issued a statement, on November 27, complaining of pressure by businessman Ihor Kolomoysky and urging support from the mass media and the international community. Kolomoysky is a Forbes-listed billionaire and a former co-owner of Ukraine’s largest bank, Privatbank, which... MORE

The Russia-Africa Summit and Economic Forum, held in Sochi on October 23–24, was presented as an event of great geopolitical and geo-economic importance (see EDM, October 28), explicitly showcasing the competitive advantages Moscow is purportedly ready to employ in its struggle for influence on the... MORE

This week (December 2), while opening a series of meetings in Sochi on military development and the further enhancement of Russia’s Armed Forces, President Vladimir Putin set down the main tasks for the modernization of the Russian navy—the Military-Maritime Fleet (Voyenno-Morskoy Flot—VMF). Putin explained that... MORE

On November 30, at the Biltmore Hotel, in Tbilisi, the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party and the opposition held their first round of negotiations over how to resolve the country’s ongoing political crisis (Interpressnews.ge, November 30). Five former speakers of the Georgian parliament participated in... MORE

An espionage scandal has erupted in Serbia over the possible recruitment of a senior Serbian official by Russian special services. A video posted online by someone using the YouTube handle “Kdjuey Lskduf” shows two men meeting in a parking lot, with one of them handing... MORE

Russia has long counted on its geographic location between the Asia-Pacific region and Europe to cement its relationship with China. However, Beijing increasingly views Russia as merely a supplier of raw materials (Svobodnaya Pressa, April 27)—a view reinforced anew on Monday (December 2), by the... MORE

On November 7, at 3:30 A.M., a westbound train from Xi’an, China, for the first time ever used Istanbul’s $4 billion Marmaray sub-Bosporus railway tunnel to dispatch goods to central Europe (Haber.sol.org.tr, November 7). The train’s voyage represents another of China’s attempts to shave time... MORE

Belarus held parliamentary elections on November 17, resulting in a near-complete turnover of the legislature. Only 30 lawmakers from the previous convocation have retained their seats. The official turnout was recorded at 77.2 percent, with the lowest turnout registered in the capital city of Minsk—63... MORE

Russia regularly mixes demonstrations of military might and claims of devotion to cooperation with the West as a means of weakening Western solidarity. And Moscow has been fine-tuning this conspicuously contradictory signaling ahead of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) 70th anniversary, which is being... MORE