On October 3, Alexander Korzhych, a 21-year-old conscript, was found dead in the basement of his military unit, located in Borisov, a city in the Minsk region of Belarus. Korzhych was stationed at a training base devoted to five-month courses that transform ordinary soldiers into... MORE

Undeniably, Russia has fewer deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) today than the Soviet Union fielded during the Cold War (at its peak, in 1985, it had 1,398 such missiles at its disposal). However, the exact number and condition of Moscow’s current ICBMs varies according to... MORE

The Moldovan Constitutional Court temporarily suspended the country’s president, on October 20, following a request by the government to interpret article 98, paragraph 6 of the Constitution, covering the president’s role in government reshuffles (Constcourt.md, October 20). The issue dates back to December 27, 2016,... MORE

Instead of preparing for a military conflict on the Korean peninsula, Russian officials and the media dependent on them are urging residents of the Russian Far East to focus on attracting foreign investment and spending leisure time rather than taking the steps needed to prepare... MORE

On October 16, the Israeli Air Force launched a precision attack, in the Damascus area, against a Russian-supplied S-200 air-defense battery under the control of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA). The aerial raid was conducted partly in response to a March incident involving its aircraft... MORE

President Nursultan Nazarbayev signed a decree, on September 29, adopting Kazakhstan’s new Military Doctrine. The document outlines key priorities in military security for the Central Asian republic (Zakon.kz, September 29; Nomad.su, October 9). Interestingly, the doctrine itself received almost no public attention inside Kazakhstan. Several... MORE

When Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud was welcomed in Moscow, on October 5–8, both Russian and Saudi media sources rushed to call his visit an important milestone in bilateral relations (TASS, October 8). But with the initial euphoria from Salman’s trip to... MORE

The annual meeting of the Valdai discussion club provides a unique opportunity for many Western experts to “meet” with President Vladimir Putin. This year, the Kremlin sought to build up expectations by divulging that Putin was working on a draft of a particularly important speech... MORE

The South Caucasus republic of Georgia is struggling with a plague of brown marmorated stink bugs (BMSB), or Halyomorpha halys. Originally native to East Asia, the BMSB is an agricultural pest that can cause widespread damage to fruit and vegetable crops, particularly when present in... MORE

Vladimir Putin’s centralization of power in Moscow over the last 18 years reflects his belief, and that of many others’, that the disintegration of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)—which he has termed “the largest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century” (Kremlin.ru, April 25,... MORE