Dry and sunny summer weather in the southern wooded and steppe reaches of the Russian-Ukrainian border means trouble and potential military escalation as the land dries up after the spring thaw. Vehicles may again move freely through dirt roads and fields, while aircraft pilots are... MORE

*To read Part One please click here.   For several centuries, military theorists in Russia have debated whether the special qualities of the Russian soldier can compensate for the technological superiority of the adversary (see Part One, EDM, May 16). Today, no one is likely... MORE

Kaliningrad oblast, the westernmost region of the Russian Federation, celebrated the 73rd anniversary commemorating the end of World War II on May 9, Victory Day (Newkaliningrad.ru, May 9). Similar to the commemorations happening across the rest of the country, the long-prepared parade (the night-time rehearsals... MORE

On May 18, Moscow released a navigation alert (NAVAREA 0423/18—reprinted by the Ukrainian government as coastal warning PRIP 173) for a section of the Sea of Azov, cautioning that Russian naval training exercises would make the area dangerous for maritime passage from 0500 to 1700... MORE

The governments of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania face an increasingly large espionage threat from the Russian Federation. Naturally, this threat includes the introduction or recruitment of Russian agents to engage in classical espionage activities like ferreting out classified information from government sources. But it is... MORE

Recent developments in Armenia, where a former president–turned–prime minister, Serzh Sargsyan, hastily stepped down in the face of vigorous street protests on April 23, underscored the potential vulnerability of Russia’s regional alliances. The Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) has been a pillar of Russia’s post-Soviet diplomacy... MORE

Following Vladimir Putin’s reelection to a fourth term as president, Russian authorities officially announced the final composition of the “new” government last Friday, May 18. And several days earlier, former finance minister (2000–2011) Alexei Kudrin was promoted chief of the parliamentary budgetary watchdog Accounts Chamber... MORE

Few recent events have alarmed Russian society as much as the on May 5 Cossack whip (nagaika) attacks in Moscow on street demonstrators who had been organized by opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The incident had obvious echoes of the tsarist government’s use of Cossacks to... MORE

Electronic Warfare (Radioelektronnaya Borba—EW) capability is playing an increasingly prominent role in Russia’s efforts to adopt and integrate Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) capacity in order to offer effective means to counter a high-technology adversary. EW has therefore featured in Russia’s... MORE

Vladimir Putin first became Russian president in 2000—appointed by then–head of state Boris Yeltsin to succeed him. Last March, Putin was reelected in a landslide—winning over 76 percent of the popular vote (Interfax, March 19). On May 7, he was inaugurated for six more years... MORE