Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has never been our genuine friend, declares the Russian media outlet EurAsia Daily. According to an article there by Kirill Nemiga, in the early 1990s Lukashenka was ready to lead the Belarusian Popular Front (BPF) but realized that its strand of... MORE

Ilia II, the patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church (GOC), met in his Tbilisi residence, on November 2, with Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev) of Volokolamsk (Russia). Metropolitan Hilarion is one of the most influential hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). He is a member of... MORE

The annual “Russian March” on November 4 (National Unity Day) has become a rallying point for the nationalist opposition to the regime. And this year, the event took on special significance because of its proximity to the 100-year anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution on November... MORE

September and October saw a fresh wave of house searches, arrests and increasing oppression of regime critics on the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula. But last week (October 25), two Crimean Tatar political prisoners, Akhtem Chiygoz and Ilmi Umerov, were freed and extradited to Turkey after Turkish... MORE

Vladimir Putin’s Anschluss of Crimea gave him a big political boost, and Russians still overwhelmingly support the annexation of that Ukrainian peninsula. But support for Russian forces and their clients in Donbas is declining, with ever more Russians against backing these breakaway groups and expressing... MORE

Russia does not have any meaningful political opposition, and the Duma (lower chamber of parliament) is a rubber stamp: Several small official opposition fractions in the Duma do not even pretend to oppose decisions handed down from the Kremlin. The Russian judiciary never managed to... MORE

Former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili’s political career in Ukraine has been defined by a dramatic series of ups and downs. He began, back in 2015, as an ally of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and was named head of Odesa’s regional administration. But since then, he... MORE

On October 21, Georgia held its first municipal elections since the 2014 regional self-governance reforms, which were supposed to transfer more powers to local governments (Matsne.gov.ge, May 2, 2014). Subsequently, the importance of this year’s municipal elections was much greater than any of the previous... MORE

Numerous governments have historically sought to use military spending as a means to solve domestic economic problems and generate growth. Indeed, this pattern has been so widespread that, in Russia, many in the defense establishment have long argued that spending more on the military and... MORE

Despite Western diplomatic efforts and sanctions against Russia, Moscow continues to attack and put pressure on the last vestiges of organized political and social opposition in Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in early 2014. Indeed, September and October brought renewed persecution on the... MORE