On April 29, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka delivered his annual address “to the people and the parliament.” By far the most frequently discussed excerpt from his remarks—however awkward and tangential it may have been to the actually significant topics of the 2-hour-and-40-minute speech—was Lukashenka’s digression devoted... MORE

Moscow has had little or no success in mobilizing ethnic Russians as a whole in Belarus against the current government in Minsk: the local Russian community, in almost all cases, blends easily with the Belarusian majority. But there is one group within that community with... MORE

As if trying to compensate for his recent “disappearance” in early March, President Vladimir Putin participated in a series of high-intensity meetings and public events last week. His domestic audiences included students and “heroes of labor”; instructions were issued to government ministers, members of the... MORE

The government of Tajikistan has long sustained a shaky narrative purporting that Central Asia is in imminent danger of being overrun by militant forces. Long menaced by the specter of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), the government has more recently added a new group... MORE

After Ramzan Kadyrov’s statements authorizing Chechen police to shoot to kill police officers from outside Chechnya who appear there without notifying the republican authorities (see EDM, April 27), the governor of Dagestan, Ramazan Abdulatipov, came out in support of his colleague, saying that special operations... MORE

The Shi’a Houthi rebels’ advance on Yemen’s capital Sana’a from late 2014 was a slow burning conflict that led to the resignation of President Abdu Rabbu Mansur Hadi on January 22, which prompted chaos in Sana’a and has since spread to much of the rest... MORE

On February 17, three British teenagers left their East London homes and boarded a plane for Turkey. Soon afterwards, they crossed into Syria, where they are believed to have joined the Islamic State militant group (al-Jazeera, February 21). This event has put female radicalization in... MORE

On April 26, Kazakhstan held an early presidential election, the fifth presidential election in its modern history since gaining independence in late 1991. Unsurprisingly, the incumbent, Nursultan Nazarbayev, won the vote by a landslide. According to the Central Election Commission’s official communiqué, he obtained 97.75... MORE

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has become one of Russia’s most quoted persons for the second time since last December. After the incursion into Grozny by a small group of militants on December 4, 2014, Kadyrov ordered the burning down of the militants’ houses and the... MORE

The May 9 Victory Day parade in Moscow is designed to impress the world and the home public with Russia’s relentless military might. But no one seems to be counting the expenses. The last Soviet military parade in Red Square was in November 1990. Then,... MORE