On January 17, the president of Zimbabwe, Emmerson Mnangagwa, paid a state visit to Belarus, as part of his four-country Eurasian tour. Besides Minsk, the Zimbabwean delegation landed in Moscow, Almaty and Baku (Kommersant.ru, January 15). The African continent is not a new destination for... MORE

Less than two months out from election day on March 31, Ukraine has a new presidential race leader, comic Volodymyr Zelensky, recent opinion polls show. This must be an unpleasant surprise to both populist politician and former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who had led all... MORE

Russia has positioned itself as the main supporter of Nicholás Maduro’s regime in Venezuela, thus risking turning a crisis in a far-away country into an embarrassing political defeat. Official propaganda has amplified this issue. Yet, while 57 percent of Russian respondents in a recent poll... MORE

Over the past several decades, multiple disputes over historical monuments and the symbolism they carry have broken out across the post-Soviet region. Notably, Russia has vocally denounced the removal of any monument to “liberating Soviet soldiers” in other former Soviet states—most famously in Estonia and... MORE

Last week (February 2), the influential Russian news and commentary portal IA Rex featured a story headlined, “Kazakhstan Is Seriously Discussing Becoming a Sea Power.” To most readers, the article must have seemed extremely improbable or even to be “fake news” given that Kazakhstan is... MORE

Moldova’s upcoming parliamentary election (February 24) is a three-cornered contest between de facto state ruler Vladimir Plahotniuc’s Democratic Party, nominal head of state Igor Dodon’s Socialist Party, and the pro-Western, mainly extra-parliamentary “NOW” bloc (see EDM, December 14, 2018; January 31, 2019; February 6, 2019).... MORE

As soon as Washington announced its “suspension” of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty beginning on February 2, 2019, Moscow responded by declaring its own “suspension” of the INF (see EDM, January 17, February 4). Legally speaking, neither side is allowed to “suspend” anything;... MORE

On January 26, Ukrainian State Concern Ukroboronprom announced an agreement between the Turkish company Baykar Makina and Ukraine’s state-owned arms trader Ukrspecexport (part of Ukroboronprom) to procure 12 Bayraktar TB2 operational/tactical-level strike unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) for $69 million (Ukroboronprom, January 26; see EDM, January... MORE

The upcoming Moldovan parliamentary elections (February 24) refocus attention on Russia’s current political objectives toward Moldova and the small country’s own vulnerabilities vis-à-vis Russia. In the general context of Russian influence operations and meddling with foreign elections, the debate on Moldova’s elections and post-election outlook... MORE

Less noticed but no less important than the reported arrival of Russian mercenaries in Venezuela (see EDM, January 28, 31) has been the influx of Russia Wagner Group “private military contractors” (PMC) in Khartoum to help local security forces shore up the embattled regime of... MORE