Moscow’s brutal dispatch of more than 35,000 Soviet troops into Azerbaijan in January 1990— nominally to defend the Armenian minority there but in fact to block moves toward that republic’s independence—remains a deep wound in its national life. The Azerbaijanis to this day refer to... MORE

The Kremlin-controlled Russian media and top officialdom have greeted President Joe Biden and his administration taking power in the US with a massive, almost hysterical propaganda broadside. Kremlin news outlets have been castigating Biden as an old and senile figurehead president, who will hardly survive... MORE

In a recent interview, the Russian president’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov remarked that Moldova’s president Maia Sandu had more than enough domestic challenges demanding her attention than requesting the withdrawal of Russian military forces from the Transnistrian region (Newsmaker.md, January 5; Newsmaker.md, November 30, 2020). This... MORE

The Belorysy i Rynok newspaper asked three prominent Belarusian analysts to predict the country’s near future. But two out of three only shared observations, not forecasts. Thus, Piotr Rudkovsky, head of the Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies, observed that for any political regime, creating an... MORE

The decision of Russian democratic opposition leader Alexei Navalny to return to Moscow was announced on January 13 in a deliberately matter-of-fact way—and produced a full-blown political storm. His message on Instagram was as plain as it gets: “The air-ticket for Sunday is just purchased,... MORE

Many Russians celebrated the restoration of Russian place names and dropping their Soviet toponyms in the 1990s, seeing that process as opening the way forward from Communist rule; and more recently, they have supported further such changes in the names of streets, airports and other... MORE

The unrecognized Karabakh republic (“Artsakh” to Armenians), a militarized proto-state, seems headed for leadership change. Following its defeat (shared with Armenia) by Azerbaijan in the recent 44-day war, Karabakh’s so-called president, Araiyk Harutiunian, announced his intention to resign and quit politics as soon as a... MORE

What will happen in Belarus, and when? Any attempt at addressing this question would need to invoke such variables as the level of unity of Belarusian society, actions of the political regime, the health of the Belarusian economy, the role of Moscow, and the relative... MORE

Introduction Amid the coldest winter recorded since 1966, provinces across the People’s Republic of China (PRC) struggled with the worst electrical blackouts seen in nearly a decade (OilPrice, January 8). More than a dozen cities across Zhejiang, Hunan, Jiangxi, Shaanxi, Inner Mongolia, and Guangdong provinces... MORE

Introduction Under Xi Jinping, the leadership of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has initiated multi-pronged measures to ensure the success of celebrations marking the centenary of the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in July this year and planning for the 20th CCP... MORE