It has been one month since a group of demobilized Ukrainian soldiers and veterans of the volunteer battalions took it upon themselves (starting on January 25) to enforce a trade embargo with the occupied territories of Donbas (region of eastern Ukraine encompassing the Donetsk and... MORE

Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev surprised his fellow citizens and international observers alike when he announced, on January 11, the establishment of a special commission to elaborate wide-ranging constitutional reform. It had been less than two months since Nazarbayev spoke to a group of Western journalists... MORE

One news story has been dominating headlines in Russia’s Krasnodar region (also known as Kuban, after the main river) for weeks: that of the alleged embezzlement of funds originally designated for the building of a perinatal clinic in Sochi. The funds were awarded under the... MORE

The Georgian Ministry of Defense (MoD) has reintroduced compulsory military service in the army, eight months after then–defense minister Tina Khidasheli abolished military conscription (Civil Georgia, February 15). As early as November 2016, Georgian Minister of Defense Levan Izoria announced his plans to ultimately restore... MORE

Belarus’s legendary calm was shattered by three momentous disruptions in recent days. First, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka surprisingly agreed to a two-hour meeting with Iosif Seredich, the editor-in-chief of the major opposition newspaper Narodnaya Volya. Second, mass rallies have gripped Minsk and Belarus’s other five regional... MORE

Multiple officials in the new United States presidential administration have suggested that not all member countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are paying their fair share for the common defense. They proclaim that these government need to devote at least 2 percent of... MORE

No post-Soviet republic is so little known beyond its borders as Turkmenistan. This relative obscurity internationally is the result of three legacies: its poverty in Soviet times; its relatively tiny cohort of intellectuals who might have called attention to the country; and perhaps most importantly,... MORE

The annual Munich Security Conference will take place later this week (February 17–19). And it was ten years ago at this forum that President Vladimir Putin delivered an inflammatory speech detailing Russia’s deep dissatisfaction with the world order. A decade hence, Russian official media is... MORE

The Russian State Duma (lower house of parliament) adopted a new set of laws, on January 27, aiming to “protect critical infrastructure of the Russian Federation against hacker attacks” (Rosbalt.ru, Duma.gov.ru, January 27). Dmitry Shalkov, a top-ranking ultra-conservative official of the Federal Security Service (FSB)... MORE

Romania is becoming the envy of the world when it comes to peaceful mass protests successfully holding the government accountable. A little over a year ago, 20,000 Romanians protested in the streets of the country’s capital against corruption and regulatory ineptitude, which had resulted in... MORE