In recent days, the world has been focusing on Ukrainian-backed incursions into some Russian regions bordering Ukraine. Nevertheless, three developments over the past week strongly suggest that Moscow is also alarmed by growing Ukrainian involvement inside the Russian Federation thousands of miles to the east... MORE

Introduction Against the backdrop of the grisly Russia-Ukraine war, the security situation in East Asia may appear conducive to the continuation of the long peace that the region has enjoyed for decades. However, the devastating European war has cast a long shadow eastward. While Russia’s... MORE

Dmitry Gurnevich of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) analyzed the biographies of Belarus’s top-ranking military officers and concluded that many of them were either born in Russia, graduated from Russian military academies, or both (Svaboda, November 3). Specifically, out of the nine top military leaders,... MORE

On July 14, both Western (Euractiv.com, July 13) and Russian (Rbc.ru, July 14) sources reported that the European Union’s seventh sanctions package will put an embargo on Russian gold imports. If this happens, the EU will join the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and... MORE

Chinese firms are building railways into the Russian north in order to secure access to the enormous reserves of natural resources there. From one point of view, these efforts are helping Moscow, which itself lacks the funds to build railways in the far-flung areas east... MORE

At an April 26 meeting in the Kremlin with United Nations Secretary General António Guterres, President Vladimir Putin again defended the “independence” of the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” in Ukraine’s Donbas. In referring to these puppet formations, backed near-exclusively by Russia’s military and financial... MORE

Amidst growing tensions in the Western Pacific over rival Chinese and United States efforts to bolster their presence there, Russia’s military is pursuing a major upgrade of the Viliuchinsk naval base in the Russian Far East. Viliuchinsk is the Pacific Fleet’s ballistic nuclear missile submarine... MORE

It is often said that most people have little difficulty living in huts until someone builds a castle nearby; then, the poverty they are experiencing becomes unbearable, and their anger at those in the castle will inevitably grow. That adage certainly holds true for the... MORE

For the third time since the beginning of October, Chinese employees of the Russian state-owned oil giant Rosneft came out to protest. Their grievances include the failures of that company to pay them in a timely fashion, to assist those whose positions have been eliminated,... MORE

In addition to other notable developments, the Sixth Eastern Economic Forum 2021 (EEF-2021), held on September 2–4, in Vladivostok (see EDM, September 14), unraveled an aspect that could have strategic long-term implications for Russia’s future development. Specifically, during the event, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu... MORE