German Chancellor Angela Merkel uncharacteristically interrupted her summer vacation to receive Russian President Vladimir Putin on August 18, 2018, at Meseberg Castle, near Berlin. It was the second Merkel-Putin meeting within three months. Their meeting in Sochi last May triggered a flurry of bilateral German-Russian... MORE

Sergei Skripal (66), a former Russian military intelligence (GRU) colonel, was arrested in Moscow in 2004 for allegedly being an agent of the United Kingdom’s MI6 intelligence service. In 2010, Skripal was pardoned, released and sent to the UK in a major spy exchange involving... MORE

The arrest by German police of a 29-year-old Tunisian immigrant in Cologne may have foiled what Herbert Reul, the interior minister for the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, claimed had the potential to be "the biggest terrorist-attack Europe has witnessed"  (Kölnische Rundschau, June 20; Frankfurter... MORE

Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who also holds the position of Italy’s minister of the interior, met with his Russian counterpart, Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev, and two members of the Russian Security Council, in July 2018 (Il Foglio, July 18; Corriere della Sera, July... MORE

United States President Donald Trump’s behavior at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) recent summit in Brussels (July 11–12) and in its aftermath has cast a shadow on this landmark event. Trump’s follow-up actions, including the meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, continued hitting... MORE

United States President Donald Trump’s behavior at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) recent summit in Brussels (July 11–12) and in its aftermath has cast a shadow on this landmark event. Trump’s follow-up actions, including the meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, continued hitting... MORE

In the past several days, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the first deputy defense minister and chief of the General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov, went on an unprecedented joint trip to Israel, Germany and France to promote a new plan to rebuild Syria and... MORE

At the July 16 summit in Helsinki, a Russian journalist asked United States President Donald Trump, who had come there to meet with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, about the US leader’s earlier accusation (Sputnik News, July 11) that Germany is “controlled by Russia” due to its... MORE

Four years ago, then–United States President Barack Obama famously stated that Georgia is not presently on the path to membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) (Civil Georgia, March 27, 2014). Nevertheless, Tbilisi persisted in its efforts to maintain ever-closer relations with the transatlantic... MORE

German support for Russia’s plans to double the capacity of the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea has, in turn, encouraged Bulgaria’s aspirations to develop a regional gas hub with Russian help. Sofia has been seeking a similar arrangement with Gazprom to... MORE