Moscow continues with its preparations for the Zapad 2017 bilateral strategic military exercises with Belarus in September, widely expected to be the largest display of Russian military strength since the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Concerns among members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)... MORE

On June 22, Minsk hosted a large gathering of top diplomats from Central and Eastern Europe, who came to Belarus to participate in the annual foreign ministers’ meeting of the Central European Initiative (CEI). The event took place within the framework of the Belarusian presidency... MORE

No sooner had the uproar caused by Svetlana Alexievich’s pronouncement about Belarusian Catholics (see EDM, June 15) calmed down, than a new scandal broke. Now, Russians are the offended party. Alexievich is the 2015 Nobel Prize laureate in literature. Born in 1948, in Ukraine, to... MORE

Belarus hosted the trilateral military exercise Slavic Brotherhood 2017, on June 6–14, bringing together Armed Forces personnel from Russia, Belarus and Serbia (Vsr.mil.by, June 16). The maneuvers were headed by Lieutenant General Andrei Ravkov (the defense minister of Belarus), Zoran Djordjevic (minister of defense of... MORE

It is worth noting that, in recent months, two segments of the Belarusian analytical community—zealously Russia-oriented commentators on the one hand, and the radical Westernizing opposition on the other—have conspicuously not published anything of substance. The leading wordsmiths from the former group are in jail... MORE

“Not merely tanks and weapons can kill, words can too,” wrote archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, the leader of Belarusian Catholics, in his resentful letter to Svetlana Alexievich, the 2015 Nobel Prize laureate in literature. “The war that Russia started in Donbas is on Russia’s conscience,” Alexievich... MORE

Twice in the past several weeks, Russian intrusions put the Baltics on high alert. On June 1, several Russian soldiers, traveling from the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad without transit permits, were stopped in Lithuania (Apollo.lv, June 2). A week later, two Goryn-class tugboats—the MB-119 and... MORE

The aggressiveness Moscow has shown in its relations with countries in the former Soviet space reflects Russia’s loss of influence via “soft” power channels. At the same time, the Kremlin’s demonstrated bellicosity simply exacerbates that loss. Consequently, if President Vladimir Putin is going to rebuild... MORE

Belarus has been formally independent since December 1991; but as Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei averred two years ago, in an interview with The Washington Post, “We have not yet arrived at the realization of what we are as a nation… As a nation, we are... MORE

After the liquidation of the Independent Institute for Socio-Economic and Political Studies (IISEPS—see EDM, September 7, 2016), no polling agency, state-run or independent, has conducted and published regular national surveys. From time to time, however, the void is filled by reliable sources. Thus, in April,... MORE