The Ukrainian Rada (parliament) successfully passed health reform bills on June 5 and October 19. Spearheaded by the American-born, Ukrainian acting minister of health, Dr. Ulana Suprun, the medical reform was strongly criticized in leading Russian media outlets. However, the Kremlin’s attacks on Ukraine overshadow... MORE

One of the most dangerous times for almost any society is when new leaders decide to launch reforms. On the one hand, elites and even portions of the society that have benefited from past arrangements are certain to try to defend what they have. And... MORE

“We [in Belarus] have a genre [best described as] complaint songs. We love to take pity on ourselves and to cry out for compassion,” noted Igar Marzalyuk, who heads the Committee for Education, Culture and Science in the Belarusian parliament. Speaking recently at a roundtable... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. Since the beginning of this year, 18 Russian governors have “voluntary” resigned from their positions. In their place, President Vladimir Putin appointed “temporarily acting governors.” Some of these “temporary” regional heads were subsequently elected during local gubernatorial elections,... MORE

Over the past year, the Russian Federation experienced two large waves of resignations of governors. In spring 2017, the heads of seven regions—Perm krai, Novgorod and Ryazan oblasts, as well as the republics of Mari El, Udmurtia, Buryatia and Karelia—lost their posts. In autumn, the... MORE

Over the course of the past year, the Kremlin has been pushing the notion of the existence of a “civic Russian nation” (rossiiskaya natsiiya). This idea is meant to unify the ethnically, religiously and politically divided population of the Russian Federation. However, it is likely... MORE

On October 24, Eugen Sturza was sworn in as Moldova’s minister of defense by Parliament Speaker Andrian Candu. This put an end to an eleven-month-long battle over the appointment between pro-Russian President Igor Dodon and the nominally pro-Western government, controlled by Vlad Plahotniuc. After Dodon... MORE

The continuing, radical and apparently irreversible decline in the size of the ethnic-Russian community in Dagestan, the poorest and most heavily Muslim republic in the North Caucasus, is creating serious problems for both Moscow and Makhachkala. And these concerns threaten to lead to the destabilization... MORE

“In Russia, at the centennial of the 1917 revolution, they talk so little about it that some people abroad developed a sneaking suspicion this jubilee is kept out of sight of the citizenry because officials do not know what to say about it,” Alexander Baunov,... MORE

The just-ended 19th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress has confirmed Xi Jinping’s status as China’s “Emperor for Life.” The 64-year-old “core leader” has filled the country’s highest-ruling councils—the Politburo and the Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC)—with his cronies and loyalists. No cadres from younger generations were... MORE