The growing costs of Russia’s war against Ukraine and the Western sanctions imposed at the end of February 2023 on Atomflot, the Russian company that builds icebreakers for Moscow, have forced the Kremlin to cancel plans to build two of three massive nuclear-powered icebreakers capable... MORE

The Russian Navy’s participation in the war against Ukraine has been mostly limited to the Black Sea Fleet and Caspian Flotilla. Yet, even with these limitations, Russia has still lost one of its five cruisers and several ships of other types during the conflict (see... MORE

A wide gap, a chasm in fact, persists between Ukrainian and most Western official definitions of what would constitute a successful outcome in Ukraine’s struggle to defeat Russia’s full-scale invasion. Washington, Berlin and Paris have again indicated most recently that their support for embattled Ukraine... MORE

On February 19, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan attended the discussion panel regarding the South Caucasus at the Munich Security Conference. Afterward, they held a face-to-face meeting on the sidelines of the conference with the mediation of United States Secretary... MORE

Squeezed between two major centers of power, Russia and the European Union, Belarus is supremely vulnerable to external influences. Consequently, one lingering area of inquiry is how exactly outside factors affect Belarus. Much of what has been published in conjunction with the one-year anniversary of... MORE

*Read Part One. As part of its recent clean break with Russia, the Moldovan leadership is calling for the unconditional and complete evacuation of Russian forces unlawfully stationed on Moldova’s territory in Transnistria. Unconditional withdrawal means not preconditioned on a “special status” that Chisinau would... MORE

As the one-year mark of President Vladimir Putin’s disastrous war against Ukraine neared, the Russian army failed to score anything resembling even a minor victory to provide the Russian leader with a talking point for his public performances. In his address to the Federal Assembly... MORE

On February 3, the United States Department of State warned the Georgian government that the resumption of direct flights between Georgia and Russia would lead to the implementation of economic sanctions against the country and those Georgian companies involved in the flights. As the official... MORE

On December 5, 2022, the G7, European Union, Canada, Japan and Australia began implementing a $60 price cap on Russia’s seaborne crude oil exports (see EDM, December 5, 2022), which China and India quickly capitalized on. Additional ceilings on petroleum products are expected later this... MORE

The Munich Security Conference, running from February 17 to 19, and the upcoming one-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, launched on February 24, 2022, are high water marks of support from the United States and Europe to Ukraine. These two events are made-to-order... MORE