Moscow is a semi-deserted city this week due to the Labor Day holiday. Political life is also on hold, and even the relentless state TV propaganda machine appears to have taken a vacation. Meanwhile a peaceful revolution looks set to overturn the ruling regime in... MORE

The end of April was extraordinarily rich in high-profile international events—and Russia was conspicuously absent from all these dynamics. The president of South Korea and the North Korean dictator planted a pine tree of peace just to the south of the ceasefire line that still... MORE

The United States Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC), whose responsibility is to enforce US sanctions against foreign countries and nationals, rolled out a new package of economic restrictions against Russia, on April 6. Following its illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, Russia has... MORE

The popular mass protests that forced former Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan to resign as the newly installed prime minister of that country—a tactic he copied from Vladimir Putin (albeit with an added change to the constitution) to keep himself in power (see EDM, April 23)—may... MORE

After Serzh Sargsyan’s second presidential term ended on April 9, the ruling Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) appointed him the country’s new prime minister by a vote on April 17 (Public Radio of Armenia, April 17). Armen Sargsyan (not related), previously nominated by Serzh Sargsyan... MORE

In mid-March, the Armenian Ministry of Defense (MoD) released an 18-page strategic document entitled “2018–2024 Modernization Program for the Armenian Armed Forces.” The document lays out a framework for boosting technological innovation in the defense and security sector, raising the moral resiliency of Armenian troops,... MORE

During his recent visit to Yerevan, the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Federation Council of Russia, Konstantin Kosachev, stated that Russian weapons sales to Azerbaijan are carried out within the framework of agreements that were reached prior to the so-called “four days... MORE

On March 1, Armenia’s National Security Council officially scrapped the Zürich Protocols, signed with Turkey on October 10, 2009, under the internationally mediated normalization and reconciliation process also known as “soccer diplomacy” (1in.am, March 1). Covertly launched in mid-2007 but intensified and made public since... MORE

The Secretariat of the Collective Security Treaty Organization’s (CSTO) Parliamentary Assembly is currently examining a bill on private military and security organizations (Private Military Companies—PMC) (RIA Novosti, February 5). If adopted inside the Moscow-led alliance, the individual CSTO member states will then be tasked with... MORE

Zurab Abashidze, the Georgian prime minister’s special representative to Russia, held a meeting with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin in Prague, on January 31, within the framework of the bilateral informal dialogue launched in late 2012 (Civil Georgia, February 1). During such meetings, the... MORE