Russia holds a major operational-strategic military exercise annually. And this year’s Vostok 2018 war game, which ran from September 11 to 17, received considerable foreign attention due both to its reported size, cast as the largest since Zapad 1981, and the inclusion of forces from... MORE

Recent weeks and months have seen at least five key developments that appear to demonstrate a renewed rapprochement between Baku and Moscow: First, on July 1, a group of high-profile Russian public figures, members of parliament (MP) and experts visited Azerbaijan’s village of Jojug Marjanli... MORE

A Moscow-based propagandist says Crimean Tatar activists from Ukraine are promoting radical nationalist and Islamist ideas among the Crimean Tatar diaspora in Uzbekistan and thereby threatening the stability of this Central Asian republic. The Kremlin clearly hopes such an argument will ensure Tashkent does not... MORE

Yevgeny Primakov and Dmitry Kozak, names identified with Russia’s past attempts to “federalize” Moldova with Transnistria (1997 “Primakov Plan Memorandum”; 2003 “Kozak Plan Memorandum”), are now returning to Moldova in updated iterations. Kozak, currently deputy prime minister, has been tasked by Russian President Vladimir Putin... MORE

Following bilateral closed-door talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in Moscow, on September 8, Armenia’s interim Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told journalists that Russia and Armenia would soon launch a “joint humanitarian mission” in Syria (Azatutyun.am, September 8). The operation, apparently requested by Bashar al-Assad’s... MORE

The United States and Russia have repeatedly traded accusations of the other side using oil and natural gas as geopolitical weapons, particularly as the bilateral relationship has grown increasingly tense (Neftegaz.ru, September 14). Nevertheless, when US Secretary of Energy Rick Perry and Russian Energy Minister... MORE

The predictable monotony of the high-level panel at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok last week (September 11­–13) was interrupted by President Vladimir Putin’s suggestion that Russia and Japan sign a long-overdue peace treaty by the end of the year (Kommersant, September 13). The idea... MORE

The president of Uzbekistan, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, issued a decree, on August 27, changing the official name of the 27-year-old “Presidential Executive Office” (Devon in Uzbek and Apparat Russian) to the “Presidential Administration.” Along with the new name, the Administration saw some personnel changes and possibly... MORE

The Kremlin has announced its decision to stage “elections” in the occupied Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” (DPR, LPR) in November, and has launched preparations for such elections (see EDM, September 12). This is not about the municipal elections (city, district, village levels) envisaged by... MORE

The Universal Patriarch in Constantinople is moving to grant the Ukrainian Orthodox Church autocephaly, that is, the status of a Church with its own canonical territory and able to choose its own hierarchs. This has been a slow-moving process until recent weeks, when Constantinople Patriarch... MORE