The Russian newspaper Izvestia announced, on June 19, that the country’s newest super-maneuverable fighter, the Su-35S (“Flanker-E” in the NATO classification), will soon be deployed to annexed Crimea. According to Izvestia, “The Su-35S is capable not only of guaranteed destruction of fifth-generation fighters, but also... MORE

The Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church wants to transform its headquarters at Sergiyev Posad into “an Orthodox counterpart” to the Vatican, Jerusalem and Mecca. Such a program could cost the country as much as 140 billion rubles ($2.3 billion), increase centralized control over... MORE

Dmitry Kozak, Russian deputy prime minister and special envoy of President Vladimir Putin for Moldovan affairs, visited Moldova twice within three weeks (June 2-4 and 24–25) to facilitate the transition from billionaire Vladimir Plahotniuc’s pocket government toward a coalition of pro-Russia and pro-Western parties. The... MORE

Despite official declarations to the contrary, June 21 passed by with no joint memorandum on deeper political-economic integration between Belarus and Russia. And while government-linked media outlets in Russia evince equanimity and even satisfaction about how these talks are allegedly progressing, the fact remains that... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here.   Moldova had become a paradigmatic case of state capture under the rule of Vladimir Plahotniuc, in a sequence comparable to what happened in Georgia under Bidzina Ivanishvili. The paradigm involves personal, informal control over state institutions by... MORE

On May 28, the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) arrested three Ukrainian citizens who staged an explosion in the lobby of a resort hotel in the major Black Sea port city of Odesa. The suspects were allegedly also planning to launch another terrorist act. Reportedly,... MORE

Mikhail Babich, the former Russian ambassador to Belarus, has been put in charge of integration efforts covering the entire Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The Kremlin had to pull Babich out of Minsk at the end of April because he had so offended President Alyaksandr... MORE

Moldova is hosting (on June 24) a European Parliament delegation led by David McAllister, the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee. The European visitors aim to “take stock of the political situation in Moldova and exchange views with the country’s new government” (David-mcallister.de, June 21).... MORE

The fall of Moldova’s ruler, Vladimir Plahotniuc, this month (see EDM, June 10) concludes a ten-year historical cycle for the country. Ever since the Communist Party’s loss of power in 2009, a nominally democratic, self-described pro-Western government was in charge in Chisinau. From 2010 onward,... MORE

Fyodor Lukyanov, Russia’s premier political commentator and the chair of the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, recently wrote an article titled, “Former [Soviet] Union Republics Enter New Development Phase. And Russia Is Touched by This Process, Too” (Global Affairs, June 13). In the piece,... MORE