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

Antonov, Ukraine’s only designer and manufacturer of aircraft, has severed all ties with Russia, which had been its main market and partner for decades (Ukrayinska Pravda, September 10). This was unavoidable, given the de facto war waged by Moscow, which prompted Kyiv to stop Ukrainian... MORE

Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has been carrying on a rapprochement with the Vatican and has even been pushing for Pope Francis to visit Minsk (Interfax, May 23, August 19). Such efforts, along with discussions in the Belarusian media about the possibility of having the Belarusian... MORE

Belarus held parliamentary elections on Sunday, September 11. Two opposition-minded candidates have been elected to the Belarusian legislature’s lower chamber, the House of Representatives: Anna Konopatskaya from the United Civic Party (headed by Anatol Lebedko, a long-time opposition politician) and Elena Anisim, deputy chairperson of... MORE

The Russian Armed Forces have begun their pre-announced strategic military exercise “Kavkaz 2016” in Crimea, the North Caucasus, and the Black and Caspian Seas. Reportedly, the exercise, held on September 5–10, “will test the battle-readiness of troops, new weapons, as well as command-and control equipment.”... MORE

Dedicated Belarus watchers are almost certainly bemoaning the recent termination of a reputable non-state polling firm, the Independent Institute for Socio-Economic and Political Studies (IISEPS) (Belapan, August 9). Founded in 1992 by Oleg Manaev, a sociology professor at the Belarusian State University (BSU), IISEPS conducted... MORE

Recent months have seen conspicuously positive developments in Belarusian-Polish relations after years of political tensions. On July 20, Warsaw hosted political consultations between the foreign ministries of the two states, where the head of Polish diplomacy, Witold Waszczykowski, expressed satisfaction with the “progressing normalization of... MORE