After the West extended additional sanctions against Belarus and following Belarusian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s big press conference on August 9, the Kremlin began signaling its readiness to implement the so-called Armenian model to resolve the political crisis in the country. During Lukashenka’s press conference last... MORE

In Soviet times, Russian writers habitually referred to what many now call Central Asia as “Central Asia and Kazakhstan” as a way of signaling that, from Moscow’s perspective, Kazakhstan was closer to Russia. Kazakhstan stood out from the other Soviet republics of Central Asia by... MORE

The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) has begun massive Zapad 2021 operational-strategic war games together with its smallish ally Belarus. The quadrennial Zapad (“West”) exercises are designed to test the ability of a joint Russo-Belarus military force to defend the Russo-Belarus Union State against enemies,... MORE

The political crisis in Belarus seems to have entered the stage of unstable equilibrium both inside the country and along its perimeter. A system in this position accelerates away from steadiness if displaced even slightly. As Yauhenii Preiherman, who heads the Minsk Dialogue platform, opined,... MORE

As the United States military completes its retreat from Afghanistan, Russia, despite its own humiliating 1989 exit from the war-torn country, has been gloating (see EDM, August 19), apparently hoping to expand its influence in the region and fill the power vacuum left by the... MORE

In early August, Russia’s Northern Fleet staged a large naval exercise in the northeastern Atlantic in which it again tested the Tsirkon 3M22 hypersonic cruise missile system. The Tsirkon 3M22 will be procured for surface ships and submarines in 2022. However, the exercise not only... MORE

The Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan has sparked concern in Central Asia and Russia that this development will generate refugee flows into both regions and that among those migrants will be members of radical Islamist groups who might mobilize extremist forces within the five countries of... MORE

The typical opinion in the Moscow political bazaar is that every foreign policy setback for the United States represents a net gain for Russia. The US withdrawal from Afghanistan, with each of its faults eagerly amplified by Russian propaganda, is nevertheless, a hard challenge to... MORE

In his marathon question-and-answer session on August 9, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka again ruled out the integration of Belarus with Russia at the level of institutions as well as the stationing of Russian combat forces on Belarus’s territory (President.gov.by, August 9; see EDM, August 16).... MORE

The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan threatens to destabilize the North Caucasus for three interrelated reasons. First, the Taliban victory is certain to inspire Islamist rebel groups in that region of southern Russia to act, just as earlier Islamist victories in the Middle East motivated them... MORE