President Emmanuel Macron’s recent warning not to “humiliate” Russia (Ouest-france.fr, June 3), while he continues to try to mediate Russia’s “exit” from the war in Ukraine, drew ire from Ukrainian officials, echoed by both Ukrainian and Russian experts and even some French thinkers. Not only... MORE

The full-scale re-invasion of Ukraine, ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 24, came as a shock for many groups within the Russian elite. They are still assessing the consequences of that autocratic decision and adapting to the fast-deteriorating political and economic environment. Meanwhile,... MORE

Although Turkey is no longer as dramatically active in the North Caucasus as during the 1990s, when it backed Chechen aspirations for independence, Ankara is quietly expanding its use of soft power mechanisms there. As Russian analyst Andrey Areshov writes, these overtures toward the region—increasingly... MORE

The authorities’ crackdown on the massive 2020 post-election protests resulted in a cardinal change to Belarus’s international relations and its regional security nexus. From aspiring to be a middle ground between Russia and the European Union and even a would-be Switzerland (see EDM, November 18,... MORE

Over the years, Moscow has poured in vast sums of money to support its loyalists in Ukraine, cultivating the ground for further military incursion. And after the Kremlin launched its massive re-invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, many such pro-Kremlin Ukrainian politicians suddenly surfaced... MORE

A group of Soviet-built T-62M main battle tanks were recently spotted in an occupied area of Kherson Oblast. The units were equipped with metal grids over the turrets, apparently as some sort of improvised protection (Mil.in.ua, June 5). That account marked a continued trend in... MORE

Russia’s large-scale re-invasion of Ukraine continues to send tremors across the wider region as well as inside the Russian Federation, including transforming the politics of Russia’s regions. Earlier plans by Moscow to amalgamate various federal entities and to create several large supra-regional metropolitan areas across... MORE

The standoff between the main Russian propagandist, Vladimir Solovyev, and the political elite of the Urals region (see EDM, May 17) has taken a new turn. At the beginning of June, the mayor of the small Sverdlovsk Oblast city of Pervoyualsk, Igor Kabets, posted on... MORE

The preliminary results of the pandemic-delayed 2020 Russian census have now been released—the final and complete data will not be issued until later this year—and they are not sufficient either to cross check the various figures to ensure their reliability or to prevent disputes about... MORE

On June 3, at the Global Security Forum, in Bratislava, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili declared, “I will say without exaggeration that Georgia has always been a leader among Eastern European countries.” He added that Georgia had done its homework on joining the European Union,... MORE