In response to Russia’s involvement in the Ukrainian crisis, the United States has tightened its export controls, and this has seriously hurt important Russian space projects. US authorities are apparently denying export licenses that allow European and other foreign communications satellites containing US components to... MORE

Less than ten days after Russia declined to cancel export duties on refined oil products that Belarus sells to the West (see EDM, May 9), President Alyaksandr Lukashenka managed to wrest some critical concessions from the Kremlin. Following his May 8 visit to Moscow, Lukashenka... MORE

Many observers see striking parallels between the situations in Ukraine and in the North Caucasus; and many, unsurprisingly, have started asking whether the annexation of Crimea and the fueling of separatism in southeastern Ukraine will have repercussions for Russia in the North Caucasus.At a conference... MORE

President Vladimir Putin and Russian diplomacy have recently invented the concept of “South-Eastern Ukraine” as a would-be political entity. Moscow promotes this idea as part of its project to dismantle the Ukrainian state through “federalization.”Following the overthrow of then-president Viktor Yanukovych by the Kyiv Maidan... MORE

On May 11, self-declared “people’s councils” purported to hold “referendums” in approximately 20 or 25 towns or parts thereof, held by armed rebels in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk provinces (Donbas) (see EDM, May 9). The organizers claimed high turnouts and an overwhelming affirmative answer to... MORE

Not for the first time, a website has reported the death or incapacitation of a Central Asian leader only to have the report swiftly taken down and denied (see the blanked out “story” at dallol.ru/news-i1221.html). Up to now, these reports have not been accurate at... MORE

Since the eruption of the Ukraine crisis, Russian and Western commentators have tried to define those elements of Russian actions and policymaking that constitute “new” factors in Moscow’s relations with the West and its neighbors. On May 9, for example, with the threat of further... MORE

On April 30, the board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved a new $17 billion loan for Ukraine, which will be disbursed over two years. Ukraine received the first tranche of this loan, equaling $3.2 billion, on May 6. The government will be able... MORE

Against the backdrop of persistent tension in Dagestan, rumors are spreading in the republic that Ramazan Abdulatipov will be replaced sometime in May. Zakir Magomedov, a commentator with the Dagestani newspaper Novoe Delo, argued Dagestan’s present leadership is solving Dagestan’s problems but that replacing Abdulatipov... MORE