The leadership of the Russian Armed Forces at the defense ministry and General Staff levels is exploiting lessons learned from the country’s recent involvement in foreign conflicts as part of a process to enhance military capability. This forms part of a much wider “lessons learned”... MORE

The Arab inhabitants of eastern Syria have once again turned out in protest against the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Western partner force in the campaign against the Islamic State (IS). The rejection of the SDF’s rule in the area has its roots in political... MORE

On December 29, 2018, the head of the occupying government in Crimea, Sergey Aksenov, proposed to transport Ukrainian offshore oil and natural gas drilling rigs (“nationalized” by Russia after the Crimean annexation) from the Black Sea to the Syrian coastal shelf (UAWire, December 30, 2018).... MORE

Russian diplomacy is well known for its apparent readiness to engage with all parties to the multiple conflicts in the Middle East, and this characteristic has recently produced another awkward tangle of opportunistic intrigues. President Vladimir Putin fancies himself a master of communicating with difficult... MORE

Until the Russian Federation launched a barrage of cruise missiles against Syria from ships in the Caspian Sea in October 2015 (see EDM, October 26, 2015), few people in the West devoted much attention to Russia’s Caspian Flotilla, viewing it, if at all, as a... MORE

Moscow has organized and deployed a large network of “government-organized non-governmental organizations” (GONGO) in both Russia itself and in Belarus. These entities were first elaborated prior to the 2014 Russian attack on Ukraine to promote the integration and absorption of Belarus into the Russian Federation.... MORE

May 21 is the most unhappy day of the year for the more than half a million Circassians still living in their ancestral homeland and the more than five million who live in forced exile. On that date, in 1864—after a war that lasted more... MORE

Since Moscow’s military intervention in Syria, expert attention has intermittently turned to the role played by Russian special forces in this theater of operations. On May 10, a number of photographs were published online showing Russian special forces operating in northwestern Syria (Almasdarnews.com, May 10).... MORE

China is increasingly facing transnational jihadist threats as a result of the long-standing plight of its ethnic Uighur Muslim citizens, who are mostly concentrated in the country’s northwestern region of Xinjiang (Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region). Amid mounting Western criticism of China’s handling of its minorities in... MORE

Russia tries to maintain a finger in every conflict in the Middle East, and President Vladimir Putin seeks to cultivate connections with various parties in multiple quarrels. Presently, however, the Kremlin’s access is being curtailed: Moscow, for instance, cannot find an entry point into the... MORE