President Petro Poroshenko may be the most Moscow-hated Ukrainian politician today. The Russian state-run propaganda machine has been lambasting Poroshenko for months ahead of the March 31 presidential election, and top officials publicly joined in. According to the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev,... MORE

A high-ranking Gazprom official has admitted for the first time that liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports from the United States have negatively impacted the Russian state-owned energy giant’s sales. Gazprom exported a record volume of gas to Europe in 2018, increasing its market share on... MORE

The third anniversary of the April 2016 “Four-Day War” between Armenia and Azerbaijan is fast approaching (see EDM, April 6, 2016). That deadly clash along the Karabakh Line of Contact ultimately catalyzed the transition of power in Armenia, through a popular revolution, from long-ruling Serzh... MORE

A Russian task force of some 100 men has landed in the Venezuelan capital Caracas, arriving on two military planes—a super-large Antonov An-124 military transporter and an aging long-range Il-62M passenger jet, also belonging to the Russian Ministry of Defense. Both jets took off from... MORE

The conclusion of the 22-month-long investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller and the presentation of his report to United States Attorney General William Barr is certain to capture prime international attention for weeks to come—and to directly impact on many global points of tension. Russia... MORE

In the last several years, the Russian military has drastically increased its battle readiness in apparent preparation for a possible major conflict with an opposing massive ground force (see EDM, September 29, 2016; December 6, 2017; January 15, 2019). The massive buildup was first publicly... MORE

Moscow is prioritizing the introduction and further development of high-precision weapons systems to boost its military capabilities. Most of these systems—both already actively deployed or still in development—had featured in Russian defense planning long before the United States announced this past February that it would... MORE

The steady and costly buildup of military might in the Arctic has apparently reached a level sufficient for Russia to claim sovereign rights over international waters along the entire length of the Northern Sea Route (known in Russian as Sevmorput), from the Barents Sea in... MORE

Since Shavket Mirziyoyev’s succession of Islam Karimov as president in 2016, concerns have been mounting regarding the apparently growing ties between Russian and Uzbekistan. Indeed, Uzbekistani-Russian cooperation has been intensifying, reinforced by multi-day official visits by both President Mirziyoyev to Russia in April 2017 and... MORE

The Russian Academy of Military Sciences held its annual defense conference on March 2. The theme this year covered future wars, armed conflicts and the challenges facing the defense sector. The president of the Academy, Army General (ret.) Makhmut Gareev, provided the opening speech. However,... MORE