Mihai Fifor, the Romanian defense minister, admitted before a joint session of the parliament’s national security and defense committees that the country did not manage to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense in 2017. The government did allocate the necessary funds, but the Ministry... MORE

No surprises happened in Russia on Sunday, March 18, in the carefully orchestrated voting procedure generously described by the media as a “presidential elections.” But many questions loom over the beginning of the new term that Vladimir Putin claimed. His “campaigning” gained some momentum in... MORE

In late February, Tom Post, editorial advisor at the Finnish and Baltic edition of Forbes, and Arkady Shteimans, referred to as the publisher of Forbes in Latvia, Estonia and Finland, paid a visit to Minsk. In this regard, Dev.by, an online publication about the Belarusian... MORE

The Vladimir Putin regime, which is generally given credit for coming up with the concept of “hybrid war” (“New Type Warfare”) and deploying it against other countries, is now struggling with another task: figuring out how to defend the Russian Federation from “hybrid war” attacks.... MORE

Vladimir Putin’s presidential campaign from its first days was dressed in a military uniform. Like Caesar 2,000 years ago, Putin decided that military triumph is much more convincing than election promises. Last December, four days after announcing his intention to lead the country for another... MORE

Sergei Skripal (66), a former Russian military intelligence (GRU) colonel, was arrested in Moscow in 2004 for allegedly being an agent of the United Kingdom’s MI6 intelligence service. Skripal was convicted, in 2006, to serve 13 years in prison for treason. In 2010, he was... MORE

Former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili, who lives in the Netherlands after having been expelled from Ukraine, recently addressed the Georgian opposition. Saakashvili encouraged his party United National Movement (UNM), which he still chairs, to unite with other pro-Western parties and put forward a “single candidate”... MORE

The Russian Duma (the lower chamber of the Russian parliament) adopted a law, on February 21, introducing requirements for a mandatory psychological evaluation for those who aspire to join the Russian military (TASS, February 21). This provision concerns not only private and contract soldiers, but... MORE

Four years after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, it is more than obvious that the peninsula has been forcibly integrated into the contemporary Russian identity. All “achievements” claimed by Moscow since March 2014 are linked to the “reunification” of Crimea with Russia. Precisely because of that,... MORE

In January, Kazakhstan’s Ministry of National Economy reported that oil production in the country had risen from 78 million to 86.2 million metric tons year-on-year, whereas only six months earlier, in July 2017, the annual forecast had stood at just 81 million. The giant Kashagan... MORE