The Ukrainian crisis has been at the center of Russia’s confrontation with the West since February 2014, when a popular revolution, seen in Moscow as a Western-sponsored coup, ousted the pro-Russian government of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych. This, the Kremlin believed, was an attempt by... MORE

Moscow has seemingly long wanted to have it both ways (see EDM, April 2, 23) on the Montreux Convention, which governs naval passage through the Turkish Straits (the Bosporus and the Dardanelles). On the one hand, Russia has cast itself as a supporter of this... MORE

President Igor Dodon has effectively disavowed Moldova’s sponsorship of the United Nations General Assembly’s (UNGA) resolution, adopted one year ago at Chisinau’s initiative, that called for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Moldova’s Transnistria region. Addressing the UNGA on September 26 (Presedinte.md, accessed September 29),... MORE

President Alyaksandr Lukashenka conducted a press conference for Ukrainian journalists in Minsk, on September 26. Compared to Lukashenka’s more regular face-to-face contacts with the Russian media, the scale of this briefing was decidedly smaller. Whereas the 2016 press conference for Russian journalists involved 80 reporters... MORE

On August 19–29, Russia hosted the multinational exercise Defenders of Friendship 2019, which involved the joint participation of Russian and Egyptian paratroopers as well as Belarusian special forces (Mil.ru, August 16, 2018). The exercise was the fourth of its kind in four years. Its first... MORE

Moscow has found itself in a weaker position in its negotiations with Kyiv on continuing natural gas transit through Ukraine to Europe after December 31. The current ten-year gas transmission agreement between Russia’s Gazprom and Naftogaz of Ukraine will expire at the end of the... MORE

The Kremlin has reason to celebrate as Russian foreign policy recently registered several significant successes across Europe’s East. First, following almost three decades of resistance, Belarus ostensibly agreed to a number of important joint institutions with Russia, pushing bilateral integration forward, with Minsk as the... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. *To read Part Two, please click here. On September 18, in the Minsk Contact Group, the Ukrainian delegation, headed by former president Leonid Kuchma, declined to negotiate with Russia and Donetsk-Luhansk toward codifying the Steinmeier Formula into an... MORE

Bucharest’s Road to Beijing Goes through Washington As with many other Eastern and Central European nations, Romania has consistently considered its relationship with the United States to be a privileged one: a strategic partnership meant to mitigate the risks of a neighboring assertive Russia. Nonetheless,... MORE

In October 2013, President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) unveiled the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), an ambitious plan to build infrastructure and improve transport connectivity in more than 60 countries across Asia and beyond. Since that time, the BRI has... MORE