Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would be holding no cards in the event of a one-on-one meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Zelenskyy is known to believe that he holds the card of his personal charm and the moral card, but those do not count with... MORE

Military tensions along the Russian-Ukrainian border reached a near-boiling point in recent weeks. During March–April, Moscow amassed as many as 110,000 troops and 56 permanent-readiness battalion tactical groups (BTG) close to eastern Ukrainian territory, according to the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) of... MORE

Russia is downscaling its buildup of military forces in Ukraine’s vicinity after three weeks of an elaborate war scare. The Russian pullback under way since April 22, however, is neither complete nor irreversible: a repeat buildup of forces around Ukraine is anticipated for September with... MORE

Two important and connected developments in the second half of April—military exercises in Crimea (RIA Novosti, April 22) and the wider growing tensions with Ukraine—cogently reiterated the military-political importance to Russia of this illegally annexed peninsula. Since 2014, Moscow has been heavily investing in building... MORE

Russia’s long-serving minister of defense, Sergei Shoigu, announced last week (April 22) that the Russian forces massed around Ukraine’s eastern and southern borders would withdraw between April 23 and May 1 (TASS, April 22; see EDM, April 22). Moscow had dubiously asserted that this massive... MORE

Many observers are treating Russia’s pullback of land forces from the Ukrainian border as the end of the crisis—even some of those experts who acknowledge the Kremlin has not given up its aggressive posturing against Ukraine (Voennoe Obozrenie, April 25). Yet that belligerent stance may... MORE

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced earlier this year that a number of large infrastructure projects had been launched in the territories liberated from Armenian occupation as a result of the 2020 Second Karabakh War. Importantly, he added that friendly countries and partners would be involved... MORE

Aside from the April 22 Russia-Belarus summit, which did not turn out to be groundbreaking, three other stories have dominated news headlines pertaining to Belarus over the past week or so: the allegedly uncovered coup plot against President Alyaksandr Lukashenka; a peculiar twist in relations... MORE

President Vladimir Putin’s annual address to the Russian Federal Assembly (parliament), delivered last Wednesday, April 21, following a long delay, was anticipated to present a whole host of major surprises; but the speech turned out to be surprising only for its extraordinarily low content (see... MORE

In advance of Russia’s assumption of the two-year rotating chairmanship of the Arctic Council in May, Moscow is calling on the United Nations to approve its claims to even more of the Arctic seabed, including territories also claimed by Denmark and Canada. Furthermore, President Vladimir... MORE