Moscow has been expanding the size and capabilities of its Caspian Flotilla. Most directly, this has implications for the Caspian littoral states and their development of oil and natural gas from the Caspian seabed. But it also impacts Ukraine and its coastline because the Russian... MORE

The United States’ Federal Register published the “Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations” on November 5, re-imposing US sanctions on Iran (Federalregister.gov, November 5). This expected action by Washington had raised concerns in Baku about the potential implications of renewed Iran sanctions on Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz-II... MORE

The Donetsk and Luhansk “People’s Republics” (DPR, LPR) staged pseudo-presidential and pseudo-parliamentary elections on November 11 (see EDM, November 15), pursuant to decisions handed down from the Kremlin in early September (see EDM, September 12, 13). Along with the November 24–25 naval attacks on Ukrainian... MORE

On November 25, Russian Coast Guard ship Don rammed a Ukrainian tugboat, damaging the latter vessel’s main engine. The attack occurred while two Ukrainian small-sized armored artillery boats, the Berdyansk and Nikopol, and the tugboat Yany Kapu were being transferred from the Ukrainian Black Sea... MORE

Dmitri Peskov, the Kremlin’s press secretary, had to recently (November 13) explain that there was nothing extraordinary about the fact that President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev were out of the country at the same time (RIA Novosti, November 13). Medvedev’s whereabouts are... MORE

Kremlin-orchestrated, internationally unrecognized “elections” were held on November 11 in the Donetsk and Luhansk “People’s Republics” (DPR, LPR), Russian-controlled territories in Ukraine’s east. The final returns, made public on November 14, serve to confirm and prolong the authority of the “head of the republic” (“glava... MORE

Private military companies (PMC), which the Kremlin has used with success in Ukraine, Syria, the Central African Republic and elsewhere, nonetheless constitute a potentially serious problem domestically for Russia. If they pursue their own goals, they can challenge the government’s monopoly on the legitimate use... MORE

Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin had a brief encounter in Paris (a handshake and a short collective chat during lunch with other world leaders) on November 11, 2018, during the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day that ended World War One. The... MORE

Nearly a hundred members of the European Parliament (MEP) sent an open letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, on November 7, imploring her to halt the construction of the Nord Stream Two natural gas pipeline. The MEPs referred to the pipeline—designed to carry an additional... MORE

The deadly October 31 bombing of a local Federal Security Services (FSB) office in Arkhangelsk by 17-year-old student Mikhail Zhlobitsky, a member of an online anarchist community (Meduza.io, October 31; Crimerussia.com, November 1), underscored two serious threats facing the Russian authorities. First, the bomber’s identity... MORE