On May 29, in the Kazakhstani capital of Astana, the presidents of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus signed a treaty to form the Eurasian Economic Union (EaEU)—a post-Soviet reintegration project vigorously pursued by President Vladimir Putin. The EaEU will come into being next January, after the... MORE

President Alyaksander Lukashenka gave an interview to Ksenia Sobchak, a talk show host from the beleaguered Russian TV channel Dozhd (Rain), a mouthpiece of liberal Westernizers. Using the occasion, Lukashenka vented about his disagreements with Russia. For example, he averred that “from a legal perspective,... MORE

For most of the last half-millennium, the lands between Moscow and Berlin have thought of themselves and been thought about by others almost exclusively in terms of an east-west axis, as a battleground between the Russian state and European countries. But before that, they were... MORE

Russia’s official position on the current conflict in eastern Ukraine has been seen as especially hypocritical, given its own treatment of secessionist efforts of Chechnya. While Moscow supports and promotes ethnic-Russian separatism in Ukraine, in the North Caucasus it brutally suppressed persistent attempts of the... MORE

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has placed increasingly high expectations and demands on the domestic defense industry. Putin intermittently reminds the heads of the various defense companies that the modernization plans to 2020 are unprecedented, spending 23 trillion rubles ($670 billion) in the process. However, following... MORE

On May 21, Circassian communities worldwide commemorated the 150th anniversary of the end of the Russian-Circassian war. According to some accounts, the war lasted for a hundred years—from 1763, when Russian armies invaded Eastern Kabarda, to 1864 when the Russian military paraded at the place... MORE

Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in March was an overture to the broader “Novorossiya” project, announced by President Vladimir Putin on April 17. This covers eight Ukrainian provinces that Russia aims to carve out of Ukraine, whether through “federalization” or some form of Russian... MORE

Viewed from Moldova, the Kremlin’s assault on Ukraine (like the earlier one on Georgia) aims to prevent the country permanently from joining Europe and the West writ large. To defeat those aspirations, Russia acts to destabilize Ukraine’s Western-oriented government and to break up the country’s... MORE

The swift and overwhelming victory of Petro Poroshenko in the May 25 Ukrainian presidential elections (ITAR-TASS, May 25) raises questions about the new president’s security policy. In fact, he now faces multiple national security challenges:•    Insurgency in the east supported by Russia and some local... MORE

On May 19, speaking on a talk show aired on Noroc TV, Moldova’s Prime Minister Iurie Leanca made a number of revelations about what he referred to as the current cooling state of diplomatic relations between Moldova and Russia. In particular, Leanca highlighted a canceled... MORE