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

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