Since Moscow’s military intervention in Syria, expert attention has intermittently turned to the role played by Russian special forces in this theater of operations. On May 10, a number of photographs were published online showing Russian special forces operating in northwestern Syria (Almasdarnews.com, May 10).... MORE

Representatives of Turkish, Azerbaijani and Russian railways inked a cooperation memorandum on May 6, 2019, in Ankara, to leverage the potential of the Baku–Tbilisi–Kars (BTK) railway and increase the volume of freight carried along the route (Azertag.az, May 6). “The tripartite cooperation will boost the... MORE

On May 15, Ukraine’s outgoing president, Petro Poroshenko, promulgated the “Law on Ensuring the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language.” The accompanying communique characterizes this law as “one of the fundamental acts in the formation of Ukrainian statehood” (Ukrayinska Pravda, May 15).... MORE

On May 3, United States President Donald Trump phoned Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and had “a long and very good conversation” discussing “trade, Venezuela, Ukraine, North Korea, Nuclear Arms Control and even the ‘Russian Hoax’ [sic],” according to Trump. The two leaders did not talk... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here.   Ukraine’s outgoing president, Petro Poroshenko, and the governing coalition (whose mandate is also about to expire) have bequeathed the foundation and building blocks of Ukrainian resilience against Russia’s adversity. President-elect Volodymyr Zelensky and the soon-to-be-elected next parliament... MORE

In an April 23 interview on Ukrainian television, Colonel (ret.) Ivan Aparshyn, a military advisor to Ukraine’s President-Elect Volodymyr Zelensky, spoke on the subject of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and touched upon three crucial aspects for their future development. First, he claimed that the standing... MORE

Moscow is treating Ukraine and its newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, with the same implacable hostility as it did during Petro Poroshenko’s presidency. The Kremlin has not taken even a brief time-out that would have allowed it to assess Zelensky’s first decisions and the staffing... MORE

Russia’s second-largest natural gas producer, Novatek, which captured the largest share of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) market in Europe in the first quarter of 2019, has sold 20 percent of its planned Arctic 2 LNG project to China (Novatek.ru, April 25). The stake went... MORE

Military force remains a predominant instrument of choice for Russian policymakers; yet, state expenditures on the Armed Forces continue to decline. This paradoxical situation was recently highlighted by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s (SIPRI) latest global military balance assessment, which the Russian media eagerly... MORE

The Kremlin’s decree, offering Russian citizenship (“passportization”) to residents of the Russian-occupied Donbas (eastern portions of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces), is the latest in the series of legislative and economic moves to wrest this territory from Ukraine in real terms, absorbing it de facto—though not... MORE