“The world is one step from a global confrontation with unpredictable consequences,” declared President Alyaksandr Lukashenka at the meeting of Belarus’s Security Council. “Whereas Russia will bear the brunt of defending our common space, there is no understanding on the part of Russia’s leadership that... MORE

On February 4, Romanian Defense Minister Mihai Fifor arrived on an official two-day visit to Moldova. In a joint press conference, Moldovan Defense Minister Eugen Sturza thanked his counterpart and the Romanian government for its support in modernizing and developing the defense legal-strategic framework, educating... MORE

The Russian Army is planning to recreate the Main Political Directorate that existed in the Soviet Army (GlavPUR), according to the Deputy Chairman of the Public Council at the Russian Ministry of Defense, Alexander Kanshin. “The role of the moral and political unity of the... MORE

The central theme of the traditional Munich Security Conference last weekend was the current assessment of the Russian threat. The briefs prepared for the high-level participants, including US Secretary of Defense James Mattis and US National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, had, however, to undergo urgent... MORE

The Kremlin is now working to integrate the estimated five million Cossacks of the Russian Federation into Putin’s power vertical, reducing them to a transmission belt for the powers that be by denaturizing and homogenizing one of the most extraordinarily complex social groups in the... MORE

Thanks to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as well as its own efforts, Latvia almost certainly is protected against a Russian military threat of the kind some in Moscow constantly threaten the Baltic States with. Indeed, a new Estonian government report specifically concludes that... MORE

Officials from the United States and Russia, together with non-governmental sources, all agree on the core narrative: On February 7, 2018, east of the Euphrates River, in the oil-rich province of Deir el-Zour, a battalion-size armed group loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, supported by... MORE

Belarus’s Ministry of Culture has allowed the airing of Armando Iannucci’s comedic movie The Death of Stalin (Tut.by, February 5), earlier banned in Russia. Predictably, Russian ultra-patriots called this decision “ideological sabotage” (Russkaya Narodnaya Liniya, February 6). According to some Belarusian interpretations, the discrepancy between... MORE

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has moved up this year’s presidential elections to April 11, instead of the originally scheduled date of October 17 (President.az, February 5). The unexpected decision sparked heated debates inside the country, focusing mainly on the possible technical-practical and domestic aspects of... MORE

As Russian-Egyptian military and economic cooperation increases, many comparisons have been made with Egypt’s early post-independence era (1956–1971), when Cairo grew close to Moscow. Egypt’s current strategic position, however, bears closer similarities to the foreign policy of the first decades of rule by the founder... MORE