Since the Russian military became a policy tool in the Kremlin’s conflict in Ukraine, Defense Minister Army-General Sergei Shoigu received surprisingly little attention from observers of Russia’s defense policies. Shoigu offered broad support for the operation to “restore” Crimea to Russia, while emphatically denying the... MORE

The leadership of institutions can often reveal a great deal about these organizations’ changing place in the state and society. The General Staff has traditionally been the brains of the military and Russia’s “unblinking eye” on the future of war. Graduates of the Military Academy... MORE

On May 9, Belarus celebrated the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. According to Emmanuel Ioffe, an authoritative Minsk historian (no relation to this author), the overall number of Belarus’s casualties in that war amounted to 3,074,000, whereas the country’s population on... MORE

Immediately after Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was arrested for carrying out the deadly bombing of the 2013 Boston Marathon, multiple support groups mushroomed online, particularly on Russian social media. In the two years since Tsarnaev’s arrest, the number of groups has decreased somewhat and some of them... MORE

The possible international recognition of “elections” staged in the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” (“DPR, LPR”) is one of the major innovations of the Minsk Two armistice agreement on Ukraine. It is Moscow’s innovation, with Germany and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe... MORE

On May 11, an unprecedented two-week military exercise, “Noble Partner 2015,” began at the former Russian military base, Vaziani, in the suburb of the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. Russia withdrew its last military forces from Vaziani in 2007 (Civil Georgia, May 11). Georgian and United... MORE

After the demise of the Soviet state with its atheist policies, a massive process of rebuilding old and building new mosques started across the North Caucasus. Today, Chechnya has nearly 1,000 mosques and Dagestan has two or three times that number (Kavpolit.com, February 15, 2014).... MORE

Summer is the best time for major offensive military action in the Donbas region (Donetsk and Luhansk provinces) of eastern Ukraine. In the spring and autumn, long periods of bad weather turn unpaved roads and plains into a mud quagmire (Rasputitsa), seriously hampering troop maneuverability... MORE

Kazakhstan is onboard to help make China’s Silk Road vision a reality. Speaking in Astana on May 5, Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev said at a plenary government meeting, “We need to build a new railway line across the territory of Kazakhstan from the border with... MORE

The Moscow Patriarchate is rapidly losing influence in Ukraine and may be dissolving from below. These trends could open the way to the formation of a single autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church, independent of Moscow, and undermine the influence of Patriarch Kirill and his Church at... MORE