The vehicle ramming and knife attack carried out by three jihadists on London Bridge on June 3, 2017, killed eight people and injured 48, ending only when the police shot and killed the attackers. This was the third most fatal Islamist attack in the UK... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. The Romanian government’s multi-year bet on Vladimir Plahotniuc in Moldova collapsed when his personal power succumbed to internal and external challenges. Warning signs had pointed the way to this outcome, but Bucharest responded each time by doubling down... MORE

The common desire of Moscow and Beijing to develop railways linking Asia with Europe is not making as much progress as the two parties had hoped or as many had expected. This is due in part to international concerns involving third countries, including the Central... MORE

More than a year ago, the Russian “patriotic” newspaper Vzglyad shared a “discovery” extracted from a cross-tabulation of two public opinion surveys. One of them was by the French polling agency Institut Français d’Opinion Publique (IFOP) (RT, February 23, 2018) and the other by Pew... MORE

The internationally facilitated regime change in Moldova bypassed Romania entirely, in spite of Romania’s declared special interests toward its eastern neighbor. Bucharest found itself isolated in its support for Moldova’s kleptocratic, now-ousted ruler, Vladimir Plahotniuc, while Brussels and Washington were distancing themselves from him. By... MORE

On May 30, the Verkhovna Rada (national parliament) of Ukraine appealed to the United Nations, international parliamentary assemblies and foreign national legislatures to condemn ongoing violations of the rights of indigenous non-Russian peoples in the Russian Federation (Rada.gov.ua, May 30). The resolution was supported by... MORE

The Russian newspaper Izvestia announced, on June 19, that the country’s newest super-maneuverable fighter, the Su-35S (“Flanker-E” in the NATO classification), will soon be deployed to annexed Crimea. According to Izvestia, “The Su-35S is capable not only of guaranteed destruction of fifth-generation fighters, but also... MORE

The Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church wants to transform its headquarters at Sergiyev Posad into “an Orthodox counterpart” to the Vatican, Jerusalem and Mecca. Such a program could cost the country as much as 140 billion rubles ($2.3 billion), increase centralized control over... MORE

Russia launched a GLONASS-M 758 navigation satellite into orbit on May 27. The satellite became fully operational a month later, on June 22, replacing GLONASS-M 723, “which had exceeded its expected service life by some 50 percent” (Glonass-iac.ru, June 22). With the launch of GLONASS-M... MORE

Dmitry Kozak, Russian deputy prime minister and special envoy of President Vladimir Putin for Moldovan affairs, visited Moldova twice within three weeks (June 2-4 and 24–25) to facilitate the transition from billionaire Vladimir Plahotniuc’s pocket government toward a coalition of pro-Russia and pro-Western parties. The... MORE