Outnumbered in their republic by ethnic Russians and nearly equaled by ethnic Tatars, the Bashkirs of Bashkortostan, the product of Joseph Stalin’s first great act of ethnic engineering, have responded to their increasingly desperate situation by creating a new national organization, “Saving the Nation Together.”... MORE

After the crackdown on the March 25 rally in Minsk, the main Belarusian daily Belarus Segodnya published an extensive report devoted to the White Legion, a group of young vigilantes under the guidance of Sergei Chislov, a graduate of Minsk Higher Engineering Anti-Aircraft Missile School... MORE

On May 9, columns of tanks will roll through the streets of Moscow, followed by S-400 surface-to-air missiles in Arctic camouflage and cyclopean Topol-M inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBM), to parade proudly on Red Square. Similar parades—minus the Topols—will take place across the country, from Vladivostok... MORE

Stereotypes reduce the complexity of the world into a few simple guidelines, which can enter everyday thoughts and decisions. For years, Belarus has been repeatedly labeled “Europe’s last dictatorship,” thus inhibiting deeper and more serious analysis of the country. Moreover, fighting this stereotype can prove... MORE

In early April 2017, the Latvian Ministry of Defense’s (MoD) Parliamentary Secretary Andrejs Panteļējevs publicly announced the country was returning to the concept of total or “comprehensive” defense, which it had abandoned after joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Latvia will maintain the strategy... MORE

Georgia’s Media Development Foundation (MDF) recently released a 53-page report on anti-Western propaganda in the country. The April 18 report covers the period from January 1, 2016, to December 31, 2016. It relies on a year-long study of anti-Western messages and information (or often disinformation)... MORE

On April 6, Italy’s Lazio Regional Administrative Court (LRAC) suspended the environmental impact permit for the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), which would have allowed for the relocation of olive trees that obstruct the planned path of the pipeline in the Puglia region town of Melendugno (Italianinsider.it,... MORE

An underage gunman with links to Russian neo-Nazi groups burst into a Federal Security Service (FSB) building in Khabarovsk, on April 21, and opened fire. According to the FSB’s public relations center “at 17:02 (10:02 Moscow time) an unknown person entered the FSB reception room... MORE

In a system where ministers are incentivized to report only good news, China’s Minister of Education public censure of failures in ideological and political education (思想政治教育; IPE) at Chinese universities came as a surprise (FRI, March 12). A campaign has been underway to intensify IPE... MORE

This summer, the first extension of the Republic of Tatarstan’s ten-year power-sharing agreement with Moscow runs out. Kazan is currently pursuing another extension and possible modifications to the accord. In particular, Tatarstan wants more democracy at both the local and all-Russian level, an end to... MORE