The Ukrainian legislature, on April 5, appealed to the international community to stop the construction of the Nord Stream Two natural gas pipeline, which is to carry Russian gas to Germany, bypassing Ukraine. The lawmakers said that the European Commission (EC) should consult with Ukraine... MORE

While attending a recent April 3 groundbreaking ceremony for a nuclear power plant the Russians are building in Turkey, President Vladimir Putin also spoke about natural gas. And it was apparent from his comments that Moscow is continuing to take steps to maintain its energy... MORE

Every April 7, Moldovans take stock of the progress the country has made since the youth protests of April 2009, which popularly became known as the “Twitter Revolution.” Nine years ago, this civil unrest led to the demise of Communist Party rule and ushered in... MORE

Italian state-owned oil and natural gas producer ENI recently halted a joint project with Russia’s state oil company Rosneft in the Black Sea, according to Russian media reports (Construction.ru, March 30). Drilling operations by the two companies at the Maria-1 well had started in December,... MORE

When a country is faced with demographic decline—an excess of deaths over births and a reduction in the number of individuals annually entering adulthood—one of the first areas its government must undertake hard choices is military conscription policy. That is exactly what the Russia government... MORE

On March 29, during the ArmHiTec-2018 international exhibition of arms and defense technologies in Yerevan, Armenia, the government of Uzbekistan signed an agreement with Russia to purchase more than ten Mi-35M military helicopters (RIA Novosti, March 29). The deputy director of Russia’s Federal Service for... MORE

For Russian policymakers who took up their positions in the bureaucracy after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Africa may have been the least important continent on their minds. Even though Africa was the site of many pivotal Cold War–era competitions with the United States,... MORE

The fact that, last Friday (April 6), the United States Department of the Treasury published a new list of severe sanctions targeting Russian businessmen, officials and companies came as no great shock—rumors about that looming punishment had been swirling around Moscow for weeks. The surprise... MORE

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani paid an official visit to Baku, Azerbaijan, on March 28. During the visit, Azerbaijan and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding on joint development of offshore hydrocarbon fields in the Caspian Sea (President.az, March 28). Remarkably, the names of the fields... MORE

When, in October 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed Vladimir Vasilyev to take over from Ramazan Abdulatipov as head of the North Caucasus republic of Dagestan, there were widespread hopes and fears that Vasilyev would transform the local political elite by a wholesale replacement of... MORE