In Helsinki, Finland, where he was attending a summit with United States President Donald Trump, on July 16, Russian President Vladimir Putin remarked that restoring peace and harmony to Syria could become an effective example of Russo-US cooperation. And he added that both states have... MORE

Georgia’s new government, led by 36-year-old Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze, apparently intends to focus on improving trade and cultural contacts with Russia under its “Freedom, Rapid Development and Prosperity” program. In more conciliatory language that Moscow has heard in many years, on July 13 Bakhtadze... MORE

Moscow is relocating the home base of its Caspian Flotilla from Astrakhan to a new port facility in Kaspiysk, Dagestan (see EDM, June 4), an action scheduled to be completed by the end of this year. This move is taking on a more menacing aspect... MORE

At the end of June 2018, President Vladimir Putin named six plenipotentiaries to run Russia’s so-called “federal districts” (RBC, June 26). Four were holdovers, the remainder—new appointees. But all of them, notably, had close links to the Kremlin bureaucracy or the “power ministries” (siloviki). In... MORE

The culmination of United States President Donald Trump’s European tour occurs today (July 16), in Helsinki, at the anxiously anticipated but far-from-perfectly prepared meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump comes to the rendezvous carrying the baggage of old problems and new controversies (see EDM,... MORE

German support for Russia’s plans to double the capacity of the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea has, in turn, encouraged Bulgaria’s aspirations to develop a regional gas hub with Russian help. Sofia has been seeking a similar arrangement with Gazprom to... MORE

In January 2018, Beijing issued a White Paper on its strategic approach to the Northern Sea Route (NSR). The document notes China wants to take advantage of this shortcut to Europe and the possibilities it opens for extracting natural resources from the Arctic seabed as... MORE

After the end of the Cold War, both the East and the West agreed they were no longer enemies, and Russian delegations regularly visited summits of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The last such delegation attended NATO’s Chicago Summit, in 2012, though it was... MORE

Despite the relatively slow pace of Russian military modernization (see EDM, November 8, 2016), the country’s Ministry of Defense announced in May that more than 50 percent of the equipment in service with the Armed Forces will be “modern” by the end of 2018 (Mil.ru,... MORE

A series of meetings since late December 2017 between officials from Uzbekistan and ROSATOM, the Russian state nuclear energy corporation, suggests that both sides have reached an agreement to build a two-reactor nuclear power plant (NPP) in this Central Asian republic. According to Bakhrom Ashrafkhanov,... MORE