*To read Part One, please click here. *To read Part Two, please click here.   Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea and the resulting de facto border changes have overturned the geographical and political foundations of the 2003 Russia-Ukraine treaty on the Azov Sea and Kerch... MORE

The bloc led by the leader of the “Velvet Revolution,” acting prime minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan, quite predictably won a comfortable majority, obtaining 70.4 percent of votes in the snap parliamentary elections on December 9. The first session of the newly elected National Assembly,... MORE

Last Friday (December 7), Lithuania became the first country to impose new sanctions against Russia for its forceful and illegitimate action against three Ukrainian ships in the Kerch Strait on November 25 (RBC, December 7). This naval skirmish (see EDM, November 26, 28, 29) was... MORE

On November 19, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev paid a long-awaited official visit to Belarus, where he met with his counterpart, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka. On this occasion, the Belarusian and Azerbaijani state news agencies praised the level of bilateral strategic cooperation, widely citing Lukashenka’s words to... MORE

With the completion, in November, of the offshore section of the TurkStream natural gas pipeline from Russia to western Turkey, the Bulgarian government kicked its preparations for creating a Balkan Gas Hub into high gear. On November 30, Bulgaria’s parliament included the construction of the... MORE

In recent months, Russian and Western media outlets have trumpeted what they describe as Russia’s enormous success in developing the Northern Sea Route (NSR), which will shorten the time needed for shipping between East Asia and Europe—particularly now that global warming is lengthening the season... MORE

Some 30 years ago, Moscow and Washington undertook the first ever mass elimination of an entire class of nuclear weapons, as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, signed by Presidents Ronald Regan and Mikhail Gorbachev, was implemented. This spectacular disarmament signaled the end of the... MORE

For four days, Minsk did not officially comment on last month’s (November 25) Russian-Ukrainian naval conflagration that occurred around the Kerch Strait. “The situation is so explosive,” opined Valer Karbalevich of Radio Liberty, “that even a neutral and pacifying appeal to both sides may cause... MORE

In line with China’s continuing westward economic expansion, it may launch free trade talks with Ukraine. Stepan Kubiv, Ukraine’s economy minister, coming back from a visit to China where he met Chinese Vice Premier Liu He last month, said Ukraine asked China to start consultations... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here.   The 2003 treaty between Russia and Ukraine on “Cooperation in the Use of the Azov Sea and Kerch Strait,” officially in effect to this day and “sine die,” purports to place those two bodies of water outside... MORE