Foreign affairs have yielded few successes and much chagrin for Russia since the start of 2019 (see EDM, January 14, 2019). Relations with the United States are going from bad to worse, as the inevitable collapse of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty signifies... MORE

On January 10, Azerbaijan displayed its new Tufan (“Storm”)–class patrol ship for the country’s State Border Service. The vessel features Israeli-made navigational, monitoring and radio-telecommunication devices as well as advanced missile complexes (President.az, January 10). The Border Guard also received new SkyStriker autonomous loitering munitions... MORE

The tweet by United States President Donald Trump, canceling his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was such a shock for the Kremlin that a response was postponed until “official information” would arrive (RIA Novosti, November 29).... MORE

Russian President Vladimir Putin paid a surprise official visit to Azerbaijan, on September 27. The formal reason for his arrival was to hold talks with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev as well as to jointly attend the Ninth Interregional Russia-Azerbaijan Forum (Kremlin.ru, September 27; AzerNews, September... MORE

On September 25–27, the Ministry of Defense Industry of Azerbaijan (MoDIAR) hosted the defense-industry exhibition ADEX-2018 in Baku, where leading defense companies from European and Asian countries showcased their latest military products (Mod.gov.az, September 25). ADEX turned out to be a useful platform to promote... MORE

In early October, following the loss of an Il-20 reconnaissance aircraft over the Mediterranean Sea on September 17—which Moscow blamed on Israel—Russia carried out a high-profile additional deployment of the S-300 surface-to-air missile (SAM) system to the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) (see EDM, September 27,... MORE

The Russian Ministry of Defense did not wait long to deliver its promised S-300 surface-to-air missiles to Syria. On the night of October 3, a huge An-124 Ruslan transport plane unloaded four mobile launchers, radars and command vehicles at Russia’s local Khmeimim airbase. This demonstrative... MORE

Several Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) F-16 jets bombed and destroyed an industrial warehouse in the Syrian coastal city of Latakia, on September 17. According to Israeli sources, the warehouse contained Iranian military equipment earmarked for the militant group Hezbollah. The Russian airbase of Hmeymim is... MORE

The destruction of an Il-20M radio-electronic surveillance aircraft, with 15 crew members aboard, in the late evening of September 17 was not the worst tragedy to date of the three-year-long Russian military intervention in Syria; but it has, perhaps, been the most difficult to explain... MORE

The fruits of President Vladimir Putin’s “victory” at the meeting with President Donald Trump in Helsinki, Finland, on July 16, are turning increasingly bitter for Russia as initial dismay and angry responses in the United States have continued to coalesce into strong pushback (see EDM,... MORE