Recent publications in the Western media about the Russian military buildup along the border with Ukraine (Kyiv Post, October 31) provoked a new round of discussions about whether Moscow intends to resolve the Ukrainian issue by force. This worry was based on satellite images of... MORE

Introduction At the beginning of September, the Belarusian news outlet Nasha Niva revealed that due to Western sanctions on Belarusbank, China had not paid another tranche of credit ($103 million) for the construction of the $2 billion Slavkaliy potash mining and processing plant in Lyuban,... MORE

Russia’s decision to severely reduce natural gas supplies to Europe before the winter has sent prices skyrocketing, causing the most serious energy crisis in decades. In fact, Europe has never seen such high gas prices. Benchmark wholesale European gas prices have rocketed upward by more... MORE

The recent defeat in the Estonian parliament of a resolution denouncing Moscow’s russification of non-Russian peoples reflects two diametrically opposed trends. On the one hand, the down-vote is a product of the increasing unwillingness of Europe and the West to focus attention on this issue—an... MORE

On October 29, Moscow and Chisinau agreed on a conditional resumption of Russian natural gas supplies to Moldova as of October 30. The Russian side had curtailed gas supplies to Moldova by one third in October, and threatened to discontinue the supplies altogether by December... MORE

At the end of October, the Russian Armed Forces staged a military exercise in Crimea to rehearse the defense of the occupied peninsula. The military deployed forces from the Southern Military District/Joint Strategic Command (Obyedinennyye Strategicheskoye Komandovanie—OSK) to the Opuk training ground in Crimea, where... MORE

An epiphenomenon is a secondary effect or byproduct that arises from but does not causally influence a process—so in a way, it is an occurrence whose significance is blown out of proportion. Social life and politics are replete with such epiphenomena. They regularly garner all... MORE

Since Soviet times, Russian analysts have mused about the possibility that Germany might try to recover Kaliningrad, or East Prussia as it was known before Joseph Stalin seized it at the end of World War II. Later, during the 1990s, they focused on the risk... MORE

The back-to-back international summits of the G20 in Rome and COP26 in Glasgow at the end of October brought together hosts of dignitaries and hordes of activists, but one global leader was conspicuously absent—Russian President Vladimir Putin. One week prior, at the annual gathering of... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. Four rounds of Russian-Moldovan negotiations in October over natural gas supplies have revealed the two sides’ conflicting positions (see Part One). The Russians propose signing a gas supply contract with Moldovagaz for the month of November, at the... MORE