Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow visited the Caspian shore, on May 2, to inaugurate the Turkmenbashi International Seaport. The new $1.5 billion facility, Berdimuhamedow told attendees, is important not only for Turkmenistan but the wider region as well. It promises to become an important link in... MORE

The next major battle between Russian aggressors and Ukrainian defenders may take place not in Donbas but on the waters of the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait, a development that could prove even more dangerous to regional stability than earlier Russian acts of... MORE

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin informed President Vladimir Putin, on April 24, that the country’s Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) is finally able to finance itself without state support. Rogozin called this “a huge achievement that opens up the prospect for commercialization of other... MORE

Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, and Curtis Scaparrotti, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), met in Baku on April 19 to discuss several issues related to military posture and exercises. The two... MORE

Investigative reporting by the veteran liberal newspaper Novaya Gazeta has found that the Russian state security services, in particular the Federal Security Service (FSB), may be misreporting and inflating the number of terrorist acts that it annually foils. The paper noted that, in most reported... MORE

This past April, Russian media announced that the Admiral Kuznetsov, the country’s only aircraft carrier, will be out of service, undergoing repairs and modernization, until 2021. The Ministry of Defense signed a contract worth approximately $1 billion with the state-owned United Shipbuilding Corporation for rather... MORE

The protest movement in Armenia, which forced former president and recently appointed prime minister Serzh Sargsyan to resign on April 23 (see EDM, April 23, 24, May 3), has been particularly remarkable for the fact that, unlike during preceding mass street protests, this time Armenia’s law enforcement... MORE

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov wants Moscow to allow regional leaders to organize non-Russian military formations on the model of one of the most legendary units of the Tsarist army in World War I, the so-called “Savage Division” (Dikaya Diviziya), which consisted of regiments largely but... MORE

Armenia has been in the grips of a mass public protest movement since early April, when opposition leader and member of parliament Nikol Pashinyan launched street demonstrations and strikes in cities all over the country against former president Serzh Sargsyan’s attempt to be named the... MORE

Moscow is a semi-deserted city this week due to the Labor Day holiday. Political life is also on hold, and even the relentless state TV propaganda machine appears to have taken a vacation. Meanwhile a peaceful revolution looks set to overturn the ruling regime in... MORE