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

*To read Part One, please click here. The unprovoked large-scale Russian military aggression against Ukraine, launched on February 24, is putting at risk the Kremlin’s ambitious plans related to economic exploitation of the Arctic region and the Russian High North. Not only are the Russian... MORE

Bilateral relations with Russia remain of crucial importance to Armenia, given the small South Caucasus country’s difficult security predicament. Yet these considerations extend beyond hard military factors. Russia monopolizes Armenia’s energy supply, exemplified, in particular, by Gazprom’s direct ownership of the Armenian pipeline and natural... MORE

One hundred days into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has effectively “zeroed out” all Russian domestic politics—if politics is to be understood in the classical sense of the term as a competition of public ideas and their struggle for victory in elections. Significantly, last month... MORE

On May 20, the newly inaugurated “president” of Georgia’s breakaway region of South Ossetia, Alan Gagloev (who was elected on May 8), signed a decree to suspend a planned referendum on this statelet’s accession to the Russian Federation (Radio Tavisupleba, May 30; Civil.ge, May 31).... MORE

The issue of Russia’s naval blockade of Ukrainian ports, which severely hampers the export of Ukrainian agricultural commodities, has for weeks been dominating headlines and high-level discussions at various international forums. Not only is the forcible Russian obstruction of Ukraine’s food exports having a ruinous... MORE

The second half of May saw the worst violence in the Pamir Mountain region of Tajikistan since the end of the civil war in 1997. At least 40 people have been killed and over 200 arrested in the central government’s attempt to assert full control... MORE