Moldova’s parliamentary elections, held on February 24 (three months after the quadrennial term’s expiry), have produced a “hung” parliament divided among four parties, greatly complicating the formation of a new coalition government. The Constitutional Court took its time until March 10 to validate the elections’... MORE

Official Russian discourse on the status of relations with China is as upbeat as it can possibly be. Andrei Denisov, the long-serving ambassador to Beijing, claims that the two countries are enjoying the best period ever in the history of their partnership (Russiancouncil.ru, March 3).... MORE

Newly elected Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili made her first regional visit to the neighboring country of Azerbaijan. Her trip was of critical importance in terms of both bilateral relations and wider geopolitical developments in the South Caucasus. Specifically, Zourabichvili’s arrival in Baku, on February 27,... MORE

On March 1, for seven hours, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka fielded questions from journalists and political commentators (President.gov.by, March 1). Relations with Russia were the major refrain of the entire “big-time conversation” (bolshoi razgovor), which is how the event was labeled. While stating yet again... MORE

In January 2013, the newly appointed first deputy defense minister and chief of the General Staff, Army General Valery Gerasimov, spoke in Moscow at a meeting of the Academy of Military Science about modern war-making. In his remarks, he described so-called “hybrid warfare,” touting the... MORE

Soviet officials always referred to their country’s five Muslim republics east of the Caspian as “Central Asia and Kazakhstan,” explicitly separating out the latter because ethnic-Russians formed a plurality of the population in Kazakhstan, unlike in the other four. And as result of that demographic... MORE

The Russian Academy of Military Sciences held its annual defense conference on March 2. The theme this year covered future wars, armed conflicts and the challenges facing the defense sector. The president of the Academy, Army General (ret.) Makhmut Gareev, provided the opening speech. However,... MORE

The first three months of 2019 already saw a series of positive developments in the normalization of relations between Belarus and the European Union. Yet, the process remains not only slow, but also contradictory. This is one of the conclusions that came out of a... MORE

New natural gas discoveries in the Eastern Mediterranean might be a boon for the European Union’s efforts to move away from dependence on Russian energy supplies. In the current complex energy game between Europe and Russia, Italy could play an important role as an entry... MORE

On February 27, during a meeting between Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States, Valeriy Chaly, and the head of the National Aeronautical Space Administration (NASA), James Bridenstine, the US side expressed interest in including Ukrainian companies in projects pertaining to lunar exploration (Tvzvezda.ru, February 28).... MORE