A recent wave of arrests of ethnic Ukrainians across the Russian Federation for supposedly organizing extremist groups and planning terrorist attacks has sparked fears in Ukraine that Vladimir Putin may seek to exploit these incidents to stage a provocation inside Russia. Such a scheme would... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. “We should not let Mr. Zelenskyy and his team off the hook, but let them twist [wriggle, squirm] there,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently told reporters (RIA Novosti, April 28). This is Lavrov’s own style of signaling... MORE

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s apparent plan to emerge from his extended self-isolation with new energy did not quite work out as expected, and he clearly needed to pause. Last week (April 28), United States President Joseph Biden touted his achievements at the symbolic 100-day mark... MORE

Aside from the April 22 Russia-Belarus summit, which did not turn out to be groundbreaking, three other stories have dominated news headlines pertaining to Belarus over the past week or so: the allegedly uncovered coup plot against President Alyaksandr Lukashenka; a peculiar twist in relations... MORE

President Vladimir Putin’s annual address to the Russian Federal Assembly (parliament), delivered last Wednesday, April 21, following a long delay, was anticipated to present a whole host of major surprises; but the speech turned out to be surprising only for its extraordinarily low content (see... MORE

President Vladimir Putin delivered his annual address to a joint session of both houses of parliament on April 21, in the historical Moscow Manege hall, adjacent to the Kremlin, with the entire Russian ruling political, bureaucratic and business elite present. The yearly presidential address was... MORE

*To Read Part One, Please Click Here *To Read Part Two, Please Click Here The Zangezur corridor between mainland Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan across southern Armenia, if re-opened, will carry greater economic significance for the connected states than its geopolitical implications in the short to medium... MORE

The socio-political conflict in Belarus has the potential to grow even more acute, even though street rallies have all but disappeared and the authorities have, for several months now, pursued a harsh counter-offensive. Those arrests and firings continue. Thus, in Grodno, Andrzej Pisalnik, the secretary... MORE

An extraordinary sequence of oscillating hostile and conciliatory steps between the United States and Russia was initiated by President Joseph Biden’s phone call to President Vladimir Putin last Tuesday (April 13) and is set to continue this week. The offer of a summit on neutral... MORE

At the end of March, Andrei Ilnitsky, an advisor to the Russian minister of defense, gave a detailed interview to military magazine Arsenal Otechestva (Arsenal of the Fatherland) (Arsenal Otechestva, March 31). The article came out amidst growing international alarm about the quickly burgeoning concentration... MORE