Ukrainian gas consumption fell significantly last year, as GDP declined by more than 10 percent, and the output of the domestic industry in particular, which is heavily depends on natural gas, plunged by more than 13 percent. This allowed Ukraine to reduce gas imports from... MORE

Following the military exercises conducted in Dagestan last month by the snipers of the Southern Military District motorized infantry, during which troops learned speed shooting at the Dalny shooting range near the city of Buinaksk (Arms-expo.ru, January 17), a new round of military exercises was... MORE

On Monday, February 8, Russia’s defense minister, Army-General Sergei Shoigu, announced that the military forces of the Southern and Central Military districts, the Aerospace Forces (Vozdushno Kosmicheskikh Sil—VKS) the airborne troops (Vozdushno Desantnye Voyska—VDV), the military transport air force (Voenno Transportnaya Aviatsiya—VTA), the Black Sea... MORE

It has been half a year since Kyrgyzstan officially joined the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) of Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Armenia. Its accession treaty took effect on August 12, 2015. That same day, Kazakhstan tore down customs controls on its border with the Kyrgyz... MORE

On February 1, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka met with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Sochi. The meeting was not planned in advance: Lukashenka had reportedly only called his Russian counterpart on January 28 to request this engagement. This puzzled political commentators. After all, the two... MORE

The Russian federal prison authority plans to ramp up the fight against the so-called prison jamaats, according to the newspaper Kommersant. Officials say that Islam is spreading rapidly among inmates and may be a security danger in light of the threat the Islamic State poses... MORE

At the height of recent anti-government protests in Chisinau, some Moldovans in the crowd may have hoped for Romania to intervene; but the Russian state media made it sound as if it this were a real possibility, if not an actual plan in Bucharest (Pervii... MORE

As more and more low-level or hushed-up evidence makes clear, the Kremlin’s Ukraine gambit may have serious, unexpected domestic ramifications for the Russian Federation, such as increasing the likelihood of regional separatism—a prospect not seriously considered since the early 2000s and the end of Russia’s... MORE

Russia’s air campaign in Syria initially provoked critical remarks and skepticism from Western governments and commentators. However, the intervention, which involves targeted air strikes and close air support (CAS) for Syrian regime and allied forces, has made dramatic advances in recent days. The Russian defense... MORE

Hundreds of Muslim Georgians who live in the autonomous republic of Adjara, in southwestern Georgia, held a protest rally, on February 5, in the regional capital of Batumi. The protesters demanded that Georgian authorities give them permission to construct a new, large mosque in the... MORE