Recent events in Syria seem to have spurned Russia into more decisive action when it comes to upgrading its military capabilities. In part, these Russian efforts appear to be focusing on developing advanced hypersonic weaponry and missile complexes. On April 15, Russian officials claimed to... MORE

Despite the serious escalation of tensions in Northeast Asia in recent weeks, Russian diplomacy has been prioritizing European intrigues. The biggest upcoming event in this context will be the meeting between President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, scheduled for May 2 in Sochi.... MORE

Since April 18, the news in Minsk has been preoccupied with how an employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Directorate for Combating Organized Crime stole $269,150 in cash from a safe at work. This money had earlier been seized by the Directorate from some... MORE

Russian state propaganda has definitively changed its portrayal of United States President Donald Trump after the April 7 Tomahawk cruise missile strike on the Syrian airbase of Shayrat (Homs province). The forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (the Syrian Arab Army—SAA) had allegedly used... MORE

On April 6, Italy’s Lazio Regional Administrative Court (LRAC) suspended the environmental impact permit for the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), which would have allowed for the relocation of olive trees that obstruct the planned path of the pipeline in the Puglia region town of Melendugno (Italianinsider.it,... MORE

An underage gunman with links to Russian neo-Nazi groups burst into a Federal Security Service (FSB) building in Khabarovsk, on April 21, and opened fire. According to the FSB’s public relations center “at 17:02 (10:02 Moscow time) an unknown person entered the FSB reception room... MORE

Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev authored an article, on April 12, in the government-owned newspaper Egemen Kazakhstan (in Kazakh: Independent Kazakhstan) under the intriguing title “Looking Into the Future: Modernization of Public Conscience.” The phrase “public conscience” actually stands for the way Kazakhstani citizens view themselves... MORE

The convocation, last February, of a Kurdish conference in Moscow that included the Yezidis (Aranews.net, February 16), combined with new Kurdish-Yezidi claims that the Russian military has promised to provide them with training (Deutsche Welle, March 21), have highlighted Moscow’s continuing effort to win over... MORE

Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has outlined the country’s military modernization achievements in the context of the ongoing drafting and internal discussion regarding the new State Armaments Program to 2025 (Gosudarstvennaya Programma Vooruzheniya—GPV). Shoigu put forward a vision of greatly enhanced military capabilities, but he... MORE

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s official visit to Iran in early March 2017—his third in three years—was scheduled to include the testing of a section of a new railway along the Iran-Azerbaijan border. The Astara (Iran)–Astara (Azerbaijan) railroad is part of the North–South Transport Corridor (NSTC),... MORE