In response to Moscow’s threat to bottle up Ukrainian shipping within the shared Azov Sea, the Ukrainian government is currently considering a plan to block Russia’s use of the Danube River. Ukraine’s infrastructure ministry has proposed closing to all Russian shipping the canal in the... MORE

The United States Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC), whose responsibility is to enforce US sanctions against foreign countries and nationals, rolled out a new package of economic restrictions against Russia, on April 6. Following its illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, Russia has... MORE

Ukraine has been exerting considerable effort over the last several years to forge closer links across the Black Sea with Turkey, which Kyiv views as a counterbalance to Russia in the region. The two countries’ leaders have been meeting regularly of late. Turkish President Recep... MORE

In recent years, Ukraine has been fostering a national ideology that has significantly impacted the quality of relations with its western neighbors, notably Poland and Hungary. Ukrainian national ideology, on the one hand, helps it to effectively resist Russian aggression; but on the other hand,... MORE

Two informative interviews on issues related to Belarus were published in mid-April. Given by Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor of Russia in Global Affairs and the chairman of the non-governmental organization (NGO) Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, as well as Svetlana Alexievich, the 2016 Nobel... MORE

Undoubtedly, Russia’s planned construction of new offshore natural gas pipelines, namely Nord Stream Two and Turk Stream, represents an important element in Moscow’s struggle for domination of the European gas market (see EDM, April 11). However, the development and launch of these pipelines also carries... MORE

The popular mass protests that forced former Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan to resign as the newly installed prime minister of that country—a tactic he copied from Vladimir Putin (albeit with an added change to the constitution) to keep himself in power (see EDM, April 23)—may... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here.   On March 28, Russian media presented information that members of the Private Military Company (PMC) Wagner may have been spotted in the East Ghouta region (southwestern Syria), coordinating a “normalization of the post-war situation.” The same sources... MORE

The Second Investigation Department under the Ministry of National Defense published its annual report, the “National Threat Assessment 2018,” on March 26 (Vsd.lt, March 26). This year, Lithuania is celebrating its centenary of independence. And since during the last century, the country was only truly... MORE

Many Western analysts have focused on the ways Moscow is seeking to use ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers in the former Soviet republics to expand the Kremlin’s influence—both by actually destabilizing these countries or simply raising the specter that it could repeat there what it has... MORE