The Moscow media—and all too often news outlets in the West—paint Russians as a nation 100 percent behind Vladimir Putin’s war in Syria, and Belarusians as a nation fully behind Russia. But in fact, Russian support for Putin’s aggression and Belarusian support for Russia is... MORE

The nine-month-long argument about the price of Russian natural gas for Belarus has finally been resolved—for now. Belarus will compensate Russia for underpayment from January 1 to July 1, 2016 (during that period, Belarus payed only $73 per 1,000 cubic meters instead of $132, as... MORE

Facing a stalemate in its negotiations with Russia, Belarus unilaterally increased by 50 percent its tariff on the transit of Russian crude oil beginning on October 11. This is clearly a partial antidote to the lingering lack of bilateral agreement on the price of Russian... MORE

Belarus’s current economic situation is a cause for concern. The decline in GDP by the end of 2016 will amount to 3 percent. Between January and August, the country led the entire Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) on inflation: retail prices have grown by 7.6... MORE

Ukraine has approved reforms aimed at changing domestic electricity market rules, a step that is essential for curbing corruption in the power sector. This complements the natural gas pricing reforms undertaken earlier, in 2015–2016, which achieved price parity on the domestic market with import prices;... MORE

The ruler of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, has finally reacted to the ongoing scandal related to Chechen refugees stuck in Belarus since the summer (see EDM, September 29). Using his favorite means of public communication, Instagram, Kadyrov dismissed claims that residents of Chechnya have to leave... MORE

This week (September 28), a Dutch-led group of investigators from the Netherlands, Australia, Belgium, Malaysia and Ukraine published the preliminary results of their more-than-two-year investigation into the crash of flight MH17. The Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 was shot down, on July 17, 2014, over territory... MORE

Reportedly, the Kremlin is mulling an idea to relocate 500,000–1,000,000 people from the southern portions of the Russian Federation to the Far East and Siberia. This prospect has sparked fears among some non-Russians. Specifically, certain regional minorities, including Crimean Tatars from the Russian-occupied Ukrainian peninsula,... MORE

In recent years, there has been no shortage of bad blood between Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka and the Russian Kremlin. For example, in February 2004, Lukashenka referred to the stoppage of Russian natural gas flows into Belarus, in retaliation for Belarus’s insistence on lower prices,... MORE

Political commentators continue to discuss the outcomes of Belarus’s September 11 parliamentary elections (see EDM, September 12). According to the official results, the lowest voter turnout was in the city of Minsk, 61 percent; and the highest in Mogilev Oblast, 81 percent (Belarus Segodnya, September... MORE