On March 4 Russian Deputy Defense Minister for Finance and Economic Affairs Lyubov Kudelina outlined defense spending plans in light of the global financial crisis, expressing confidence that although there would be some cuts in the overall budget of the Ministry of Defense (MoD), this... MORE

Last week marked a year since Dmitry Medvedev was elected Russia's third president, but he has few reasons to be satisfied with this start. There is nothing resembling a "Medvedev team" in the Kremlin, and 86 percent of the respondents in a special Levada Center... MORE

President Barak Obama's administration has been preparing a set of wide-ranging initiatives to "reset" U.S.-Russian relations. Nuclear arms control talks are planned to resume; NATO officials have told reporters that meetings of the NATO-Russia Council, which stopped last August after the Russian invasion of Georgia,... MORE

Russia is currently actively promoting deeper defense and security ties with the Kyrgyz Republic. Following the announced activation of the CSTO Rapid Reaction Forces, established in Moscow on February 3, and the Russian-inspired eviction of the U.S. military from Manas Air Base, Russia's military interests... MORE

On February 24 and 25, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov undertook a landmark visit to Moldova, in preparation for a possible meeting among Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin, and Transnistria's Moscow-installed leader Igor Smirnov next month. The ostensible goal is... MORE

The economic crisis is affecting Russia worse than most developed or emerging economies, but its direct impact, such as the recession in industry that is expected to become even more serious in February, is multiplied by the psychological shock from the sudden collapse of belief... MORE

Will the European Union face a new cutoff of gas supplies from Russia in March? This possibility became more ominous when Ukraine's states-owned gas monopoly, Naftohaz Ukrainy, warned that it might not be able to pay its February gas bills on February 19. Barely a... MORE

This week Sergei Kiriyenko, the chief of Russia's Federal Atomic Energy Agency (Rosatom), went to the Persian Gulf port of Bushehr to announce that Russia had completed construction of Iran's first light-water, industrial, 1,000-megawatt nuclear power reactor. Kiriyenko told journalists that "The construction stage of... MORE

NATO will hold its 60th anniversary summit from April 2 to 4 on both sides of the Franco-German border. The summit is expected to adopt a basic document on NATO's Strategic Concept, to be finalized after the anniversary event and replace the existing, decade-old Strategic... MORE

"As a scholar, I establish the fact that the Russian Federation is developing signs of the initial stage of a breakup," Professor Alexei Malashenko, Scholar-in-Residence of the Carnegie Moscow Center, told Jamestown on February 12. "Not unlike the case of the USSR, the current economic... MORE