The new First Deputy Defense Minister, Colonel-General Vladimir Popovkin (retired), who is in charge of rearming the Russian military, told journalists at the Farnborough international air show, in the UK, that spending on the procurement of new weapons will increase twofold. The authorities in Moscow... MORE

The approach of a new election always leads political analysts in Belarus to revisit a familiar question: is regime change possible or remote? Are Belarusians in general satisfied with the presidency of Alyaksandr Lukashenka? Will the current rift with Russia lead to the downfall of... MORE

Kyiv has made every effort to qualify for a new $14.9 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which it expects the IMF board to improve at the end of July. With no parliamentary or presidential elections on the horizon, and a victory in... MORE

To hinder Iran’s uranium-enrichment program, the US has introduced sanctions that bar deliveries of gasoline and other refined oil products to Iran. The European Union is following the US lead in this case. Russia’s initial response is calculated to suggest that it does not consider... MORE

Viktor Ozerov, the Chairman of the Defense Committee of the Russian Federation Council, suggested during the recent operational-strategic exercise, Vostok 2010, that the key task is to provide the armed forces with “advanced weapons and military hardware.” Ozerov claimed that the first stage in Defense... MORE

Belarus and Ukraine are the only two post-communist countries where the ruling authorities see the nationalism of their countrymen as something to be denounced and combated. Viktor Yanukovych, is the first of four Ukrainian presidents whose team regard Ukrainian nationalism as an evil that they... MORE

What made the annual Russian-German summit, held in Yekaterinburg last week, an event loaded with “innovative” symbolism, was President, Dmitry Medvedev’s, attempt to set Russia’s foreign policy on a new Western-friendly course. He formulated a rather untraditional set of goals at the meeting with top... MORE

The French ambassador to Estonia, Frederic Billet, has asked the host country to look positively at the French sale of Mistral-class warships to Russia. The ambassador told Estonian media that the warship sale is meant to demonstrate the end of the Cold War with Russia;... MORE

The Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s team is tightening its grip on power. The opposition, still in disarray after Yanukovych’s victory in the presidential elections last February, has offered no resistance. More defectors from the opposition are joining the ruling coalition, some of them lured by... MORE

Russia’s Surgutneftegaz has filed a case in Budapest’s Metropolitan Court, seeking legal registration as a stakeholder in Hungarian MOL, the national oil and gas company. Surgut is asking the court to invalidate MOL’s April 2010 refusal to enter the Russian company’s shares in the Hungarian... MORE