Late last year, President Vladimir Putin referred to the Avangard hypersonic glide reentry vehicle (RV) as a “gift” to Russia for 2019 (NTV, December 26, 2018). And recently, he compared its significance to that of the first man-made satellite launched into space (Kremlin.ru, February 20).... MORE

China is rapidly expanding its presence and control in Russia’s Trans-Baikal region. This drive is, in part, being driven by Beijing’s economic interests in Siberia and the Russian Far East as a whole. However, perhaps even more importantly, the trend is buttressed by the fact... MORE

Late 2018 to early 2019 was marked by a number of positive developments as peace talks intensified between Armenia and Azerbaijan regarding the Karabakh conflict. Last December, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev tweeted that “the year 2019 will give a new impetus” to the conflict settlement... MORE

Belarus’s ongoing drive to cautiously normalize relations with the West has raised concerns from Russian military intelligence, commonly known as the GRU, that Moscow is losing its influence over Minsk (see EDM, February 22). In response, some Russian think tanks have taken the initiative and... MORE

President Vladimir Putin’s address to the Federal Assembly (upper chamber of the Russian parliament), delivered by two weeks ago (February 20), was disappointing to each segment of its audience. The assembled elites and rank-and-file bureaucrats duly applauded Putin’s instructions to channel more funds to social... MORE

With a month remaining before the presidential election, scheduled for March 31, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko found himself caught up in a scandal that could further harm his chances for reelection. A recent investigation by journalists from Nashi Hroshi alleges that one of Poroshenko’s close... MORE

The Ukrainian parliament adopted several symbolic amendments to the Constitution, on February 7. The amendments, which President Petro Poroshenko signed into law on February 19, aim to make Ukraine’s strategic course toward the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union irreversible (Ukrinform.net, February... MORE

Currently, Moscow has 21 military bases abroad, but only a handful are beyond the borders of the former Soviet space and none is equivalent to the size and capacity of the more than 200 bases the United States maintains around the world. But given President... MORE

At the February 27 meeting of Russia’s top military chiefs (the Defense Ministry Collegium), the minister of defense, Army General Sergei Shoigu, described mounting external military threats in an unstable and unpredictable world. In his opening remarks, which were reported by the defense ministry’s press... MORE

Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev will turn 79 in July, and talk of an impending succession has significantly intensified since the end of last year. Numerous local experts noted the harsh criticism that the president leveled at domestic utilities companies during a November 2018 session of... MORE