On May 5, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree abolishing the Ministry of Interior main directorates in all of Russia’s federal districts except for the North Caucasus Federal District (https://www.regnum.ru/news/kavkaz/dagestan/1798913.html).By retaining the special police structure in the North Caucasus, Putin recognizes that the situation... MORE

On May 13, armed pro-Russian rebels ambushed a Ukrainian military convoy transporting ammunition on the outskirts of the flashpoint city of Kramatorsk, killing seven paratroopers of the 95th airborne brigade and wounding seven more (Kyiv Post, May 13). The recent series of separatist militants’ successes... MORE

Today, Russia is being associated almost exclusively with the crisis it has generated in Ukraine. But that is a myopic and excessively complacent view. Indeed, Russia is carrying on a global foreign policy directed at exploiting the United States’ retreats, mistakes or vacuums created by... MORE

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