The submarine tragedy in the Barents Sea on July 1, 2019, was quite different from the Kursk catastrophe of August 2000. The explosion that destroyed the nuclear attack submarine Kursk nearly 20 years ago was the consequence of a decade of decay and degradation, and... MORE

Russians have become increasingly concerned about Chinese economic and even demographic penetration of Siberia and the Russian Far East; but in most cases, Chinese actions have been blessed by Moscow, which sees them as a source of immediate profit regardless of what the longer-term consequences... MORE

Dmitry Kozak, Russian deputy prime minister and special envoy of President Vladimir Putin for Moldovan affairs, visited Moldova twice within three weeks (June 2-4 and 24–25) to facilitate the transition from billionaire Vladimir Plahotniuc’s pocket government toward a coalition of pro-Russia and pro-Western parties. The... MORE

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov told journalists in Moscow that an agreement had been reached with the White House on a meeting with Donald Trump on June 28, during the G20 summit, in Osaka, Japan. According to Ushakov, the meeting is... MORE

Despite official declarations to the contrary, June 21 passed by with no joint memorandum on deeper political-economic integration between Belarus and Russia. And while government-linked media outlets in Russia evince equanimity and even satisfaction about how these talks are allegedly progressing, the fact remains that... MORE

The United States Department of Defense released its new Arctic Strategy in early June (Defense.gov, June 6), and Russia’s leading information outlets responded by “reminding” that, by 2020, Moscow is planning to deploy a complex multi-branch force “capable of reacting to existing threats and protecting... MORE

On May 28, the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) arrested three Ukrainian citizens who staged an explosion in the lobby of a resort hotel in the major Black Sea port city of Odesa. The suspects were allegedly also planning to launch another terrorist act. Reportedly,... MORE

Mikhail Babich, the former Russian ambassador to Belarus, has been put in charge of integration efforts covering the entire Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The Kremlin had to pull Babich out of Minsk at the end of April because he had so offended President Alyaksandr... MORE

A new escalation in the long-running conflict between Russia and Georgia happened almost by chance last week (starting on June 20), but it answered the anxious desire in the Kremlin to move Russia proactively from the path of gradual decline. Russian President Vladimir Putin likely... MORE

The dominant player in Austria’s oil and natural gas sector, OMV, has signaled that a Russia-related political scandal that recently toppled the government in Vienna will not halt the Austrian company from deepening its ties with Russian energy firms. This became apparent in early June,... MORE