The outcome of the broader war Vladimir Putin has launched in Ukraine on February 24 is far from clear; but one thing is obvious: every victory the Kremlin leader may achieve on the ground sets the stage for the collapse not only of his new... MORE

At 6 AM Moscow time, on February 24, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin announced in a televised address the start of a “special military operation” by Russian forces against Ukraine. At that hour, Russian ground, naval, and air forces were already moving to attack Ukrainian territory... MORE

On February 21, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized the Moscow-backed, breakaway Donbas statelets of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) as independent sovereign countries, establishing bilateral diplomatic relations and signing defense and friendship treaties with both (see EDM, February... MORE

On February 18, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka visited Moscow and held talks with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. In a statement to the media, Lukashenka mentioned that military-political issues have taken center stage due to “our Western partners […] scaring the whole world that tomorrow... MORE

Few events shaped the Chechen and Ingush peoples as profoundly as the experience of exile. Seventy-eight years ago, in February 1944, the Chechens and their Ingush ethnic kin were herded into freight trains and deported en masse to the sparsely populated steppes of Kazakhstan and... MORE

On February 22, a day after the Kremlin announced it was recognizing eastern Ukraine’s separatist Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” as “independent,” Berlin declared it would indefinitely halt the certification of the Russian Nord Stream Two natural gas pipeline (Kyiv Post, February 22). And though... MORE

Under the auspices of the Caucasian Federation in Turkey (Kaffed), that country’s Circassian Association and its most important branches in Ankara and Istanbul are planning to open an office that will provide support for Circassians who want to return to their ancestral homeland in the... MORE

Russia has recognized the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” (DPR, LPR) as “independent states,” eight years after seizing these territories in eastern Donbas from Ukraine. The scenario closely resembles Russia’s official seizure of Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia in 2008 under the guise of... MORE

The protracted escalation of the crisis encompassing Europe, from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Arctic but centered on Ukraine and driven entirely by Russia’s threats, has reached its inescapable culmination. President Vladimir Putin sought to sustain the military pressure on Kyiv and the West for... MORE

Over the last 30 years, demographic shifts in each of the post-Soviet countries have changed power relations both within and between them. The most obvious changes are in the size of the populations of each state, with declines in nine of the fifteen and increases... MORE