Events in Ukraine create both uncertainties and opportunities in Ulaanbaatar. A changing balance of power in Europe and closer ties between two regional powers, Russia and China, certainly create new uncertainty for Mongolia. With their country’s “regionless” fate of living between two giants, politicians in... MORE

Few signs existed that there would be any change in the brotherly and neighborly relations between Ramzan Kadyrov and Saigidpasha Umakhanov—the mayor of Khasavyurt, a city on Dagestan’s administrative border with Chechnya. Umakhanov has long been considered one of the main figures in Dagestan’s political... MORE

The Geneva Joint Diplomatic Statement of April 17, 2014 (see EDM, April 30) has gone the way of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, the 1997 Russia-Ukraine inter-state treaty, the 1997 and 2010 agreements on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Ukraine, and other international and bilateral documents... MORE

This week, on May 1, an estimated 100,000-strong, pro-government demonstration of “working people” was allowed on Red Square for the first time since 1990. The march was organized by state-controlled trade unions and supported by the ruling United Russia party as well as the Kremlin-backed... MORE

The Russian government announced this month that it would cut developmental programs in the North Caucasus by another 13 percent, down to the equivalent of about $6 billion over the next decade. The Russian government’s program for developing the North Caucasus until 2025, which was... MORE

Russia is inadvertently helping Ukraine, the United States and the European Union to escape the trap of the April 17 Geneva Joint Diplomatic Statement “On the Situation in Ukraine” (https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2014/04/224957.htm). The quadripartite statement was, in fact, dead on arrival in Geneva, as Russian President Vladimir... MORE

In a move that both exacerbates international conflicts in the Western Pacific and suggests how Moscow plans to proceed in the Arctic, Russian President Vladimir Putin has closed to all outside shipping and fishing the entire Sea of Okhotsk—some 52,000 square kilometers of water that... MORE

As the Kremlin maintains measures designed to maximize pressure on the interim government in Kyiv, it also has to handle the risks of conflict escalation. A number of signs of increased tensions between both states include the “off-and-on” anti-terrorist operations in southeastern Ukraine, Russia’s renewed... MORE

Nationalist-leaning Russian experts are expressing concern over the situation in the North Caucasus, demanding that Moscow use more force there. Against the backdrop of Russia’s aggressive moves in Ukraine, some Russian analysts wonder if the Kremlin will ever be as resolute in defending Russia’s interests... MORE

The week following Easter (April 20) saw some signs of restraint in the behavior of the key parties to the Ukrainian catastrophe, but each of the last ten days has further undermined hopes the crisis could be managed. The unexpected Geneva deal of April 17... MORE