The consequences of Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s April 3 meeting with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, as well as the March 25 crackdown on the Freedom Day rally in Minsk continue to be vigorously discussed. These consequences are inter-related. Irrespective of some politicians’ intent to... MORE

Russia’s nuclear weapons modernization program raises suspicions and fear internationally. This process, however, faces serious difficulties. A case in point is the Tu-160 strategic bomber, whose maker, Joint Stock Company (JSC) Tupolev, has had trouble fulfilling the necessary modernization and repairs on this nuclear-capable aircraft... MORE

The nearly five dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles that the United States fired on Friday night (April 7) at the Syrian Al-Shayrat airbase produced far more political resonance than kinetic impact. Nonetheless, Russian President Vladimir Putin found himself on the receiving end of the shockwave. He... MORE

The outbreak of the mass EuroMaidan street protests in Kyiv (2013) and Russia’s subsequent aggression against Ukraine convinced the Kremlin of the need to project Russian “soft power” to blunt any response from Europe. However, Western countries ostracized Russia particularly after it illegally and forcibly... MORE

Since 2001, Russian-Chinese relations have been largely grounded in security issues, both military and economic. The former is a shared perception of an increasingly aggressive United States and, in the case of Russia, concerns over the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) deployments on the periphery... MORE

The Ukrainian delegation to the United Nations took the initiative to discuss the situation in the occupied territories of Georgia—Abkhazia and South Ossetia—at a recent meeting of the UN Security Council (UNSC) (Un.org, March 28). Volodymyr Yelchenko, the permanent representative of Ukraine to the UN,... MORE

Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s April 3 meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, in St. Petersburg, seems to have finally resolved the drawn-out (since January 2016) argument between the two countries about the price of natural gas. According to the new agreement, Belarus will repay... MORE

Midday on Monday, April 3, a homemade bomb filled with metal shrapnel exploded in a train car of the St. Petersburg metro as it was moving between stations. It was not rush hour, but the train was crowded: 14 people died and over 50 were... MORE

Groups whose identities do not fit the mold others have for them often become problems for both their host countries and the different communities of which they are a part. In addition, they often make particularly tempting targets for interference by outsiders. One such group... MORE

Humor is a much more powerful “soft warfare” weapon in Russia’s hands than one might think. This month (March 2017), a team of academics from Latvia and Ukraine, in collaboration with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) Strategic Communications Center of Excellence (STRATCOM), presented their... MORE