On July 21, the Russian privately owned news agency Interfax reported that Belarus’s natural gas debt to Russia has risen, since May, from $165 million (as was disclosed then by Gazprom) to as much as $273 million (Interfax, July 21). Two days later, the news... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here.   Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the head of his Presidential Office, Andriy Yermak, have chosen former president Leonid Kravchuk (86) to head the country’s delegation to the Minsk Contact Group as well as former prime minister Vitold... MORE

Mahatma Gandhi may never actually have said of colonized peoples that “first, the imperial authorities ignore you; then, they laugh you; then, they fight you; and then, you win”; but this observation nonetheless aptly fits Moscow’s evolving relationship with the Circassians. The Russian center had... MORE

Central Asia is suffering a significant economic downturn precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic that will deepen during the coming months (The Astana Times, May 5; Imf.org, July 2020). The health crisis could also have a profound geopolitical effect in the region. As the United States... MORE

Sunday, August 9, was election day in Belarus. The official result: 80.8 percent for the incumbent, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, and 10.09 percent for his main challenger, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. Six percent of eligible Belarusians voted against all candidates (there is such an option), so the remaining... MORE

The Russian Security Council held a virtual session last Friday (August 7), and President Vladimir Putin opened with the proposal to discuss the “international situation in general”; if his subordinates had any other business, it could be discussed “in a routine manner” (Kremlin.ru, August 7).... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, have de facto acquiesced to the quasi-recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk “armed formations” in a signed agreement at the political level on July 27. Following the... MORE

Open-source evidence makes it possible to trace the steps that led Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, to quasi-recognize the Donetsk and Luhansk “armed formations” in a signed agreement at the political level (see EDM, July 29, 30, August 5).... MORE

The Volga-Don Canal, the last of the great Stalinist-era construction projects, which involved the use of German prisoners of war and Soviet GULAG prisoners to move more than 150 million cubic meters of earth and pour more than 3 million tons of concrete, marked its... MORE

President Vladimir Putin used the July 26, 2020, Navy Day and the Main Navy Parade in St. Petersburg to once again promote Russia’s “superweapons,” which will ostensibly give the Russian Military-Maritime Fleet (Voyenno-Morskoy Flot—VMF) “a unique advantage” over its Western counterparts. According to Putin, “The... MORE