This past March, Russia witnessed another wave of gubernatorial resignations and appointments. This time, the power shifts impacted five regions: Chelyabinsk, Murmansk and Orenburg oblasts, as well as the republics of Altai and Kalmykia (Meduza, March 20). The Russian public has become accustomed to President... MORE

Russians are angry at the expanded presence of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ships in the Black Sea and especially in Ukrainian ports, viewing them as a challenge to Russian power and influence there. Some in Moscow and especially in Russian-occupied Crimea are even concerned... MORE

On March 23, a Russian defense ministry Ilyushin Il-62 passenger jet and an Antonov An-124 military cargo plane arrived at Simón Bolívar International Airport, having departed from the Chkalovsky military airbase (with an intermediate stop in Syria). Carrying 35 tons of cargo, the two aircraft... MORE

Georgia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) held NATO-Georgia Exercise 2019—a computer assisted/command post exercise (CAX/CPX)—at the Joint Training and Evaluation Center (JTEC), between March 18 and 29. The NATO-Georgian JTEC facility is based at the Krtsanisi National Training Center, near Tbilisi. This year’s... MORE

The presidential elections in Ukraine last Sunday (March 31) were derided, denigrated and ridiculed by Russian propaganda, but they still marked a striking contrast with the severely controlled politics in Russia. In an odd historical coincidence, the last meaningful and even fateful elections Russia saw... MORE

Vladimir Putin’s much-publicized program to promote import substitution is failing. Indeed, Russia may be in worse shape now than it was a decade ago as sanctions and declining earnings from the sale of raw materials leave the central government with less money to spend. Moreover,... MORE

A Russian task force of some 100 men has landed in the Venezuelan capital Caracas, arriving on two military planes—a super-large Antonov An-124 military transporter and an aging long-range Il-62M passenger jet, also belonging to the Russian Ministry of Defense. Both jets took off from... MORE

In March, the Mardzhani Institute of History, at the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan, launched work on a five-volume edition covering the history of Crimean Tatars. According to the project, its realization “should contribute to objective coverage of the Crimean Tatars’ history within... MORE

Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated members of the country’s Special Operations Forces (SOF) on their professional day, February 27 (inaugurated in 2015), underscoring this service’s instrumentality in the “eradication of terrorists in Syria and securing peace in Crimea and Sevastopol during the historical referendum [sic]”... MORE

While Belarus’s self-awareness is generally on the rise (see EDM, March 19), it never stops being influenced by a wide spectrum of domestic and international affairs. Thus, a tussle between the Russian ambassador to Minsk and the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) continues to... MORE