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

Uzbekistan’s new head of state, President Shavkat Mirziyaev made his first official visit to Moscow, on April 4–5. Though the visit was in fact the Uzbekistani leader’s third foreign trip as president, after traveling to neighboring Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, Russian commentators nevertheless called it Mirziyaev’s... MORE

This past week’s big and still developing story is the sharp escalation of confrontation on the Korean peninsula. But Russia, which has made itself a key actor to many current global dramas, from the French elections to the civil war in Libya, is not a... MORE

“Despite the declared truce, our forces have lost several [the exact number depends on the day] soldiers, several others have been wounded over the past day… Notwithstanding the casualties, the Ukrainian army has not returned fire.” This is how a typical daily press release put... MORE

This summer, the first extension of the Republic of Tatarstan’s ten-year power-sharing agreement with Moscow runs out. Kazan is currently pursuing another extension and possible modifications to the accord. In particular, Tatarstan wants more democracy at both the local and all-Russian level, an end to... MORE

The United States’ April 7 cruise missile attack against a major Syrian airbase sent US-Russian relations into a nosedive. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s April 12 talks in Moscow with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin seemed doomed to fail. But Putin... MORE

Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili traveled to Ukraine on March 27, meeting with the host country’s President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman. The visit occurred within the framework of a GUAM summit. GUAM, a loose economic and political cooperation organization, brings together Georgia,... MORE

As the month of March came to a close, Russia conducted a series of unprecedented land, air and sea drills at the “Opuk” combat training area, located near the city of Theodosia, in annexed Crimea. These coordinated exercises, involving thousands of troops, notably marked the... MORE