A near-perfect storm has rocked Moscow, starting at the end of last week. On April 6, the United States Department of the Treasury published an additional blacklist of wealthy Russian government officials, oligarchs and business entities that would be sanctioned for differing misdeeds connected to... MORE

The Georgian parliament plans to hold hearings, on April 18, regarding the State Security Service of Georgia’s (SSSG) recently published report detailing the risks and challenges to the country’s security. The report covers issues related to the occupied territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, terrorism,... MORE

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