Russia has revised its war plan multiple times during the, so far, seven-week-long, ill-conceived large-scale invasion of Ukraine, yet it still remains incompatible with both tactical imperatives and political ambitions. The consecutive revisions themselves have been flawed in different ways: if the initial “Blitzkrieg” design... MORE

Over the past two years, deserted cityscapes have become a distressingly common sight, but the images of totally empty thoroughfares in the usually pulsating city of Shanghai are striking (The Paper, April 2). By late March, government authorities reported that Shanghai had recorded 30,000 COVID-19... MORE

On March 31, Anatoly Bibilov, the so-called “president” of the separatist Georgian region of South Ossetia—occupied by Russia since August 2008—announced that the local authorities would hold a popular referendum on whether to join the Russian Federation. “I believe that unification with Russia is our... MORE

On March 29, the Polish government announced that it will unilaterally place an embargo on Russian coal imports within two months (Rzeczpospolita, March 29); and a day later, it declared that Polish refineries will “do whatever they can” to terminate Russian crude supplies by the... MORE

Moscow has opened a new front in its effort to find enough soldiers to fight in Ukraine (see EDM, March 16): it is ordering Central Asian immigrants in Russia who have taken Russian citizenship to appear for induction, and it is offering citizenship and high... MORE

Russian forces invaded southern Ukraine on February 24, 2022, from two convergent directions, Crimea and Donetsk, both already occupied since 2014 (see EDM, April 6). Russia’s second invasion resulted, by mid-March 2022, in the capture of Ukraine’s entire Kherson province, a considerable part of the... MORE

How long will Belarus remain a pariah in the eyes of its neighbors? According to Yury Drakakhrust of Radio Liberty, this depends on whether the Belarusian army enters the Russo-Ukrainian war and, above all, on that conflict’s outcome. If Russia emerges weakened from this war,... MORE

Following the March 29 round of Russian-Ukrainian peace negotiations, held in Istanbul, a cautious optimism crept into the rhetoric of the Russian delegation. However, this was swiftly followed by harshly negative criticism in the Russian media that negotiations are happening at all. That sharp public... MORE

In September 2016, the chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, General Valery Gerasimov, announced the creation of an anti-access, area-denial (A2/AD) zone over the Black Sea, centered on occupied Crimea (TASS, September 13, 2016). This A2/AD bubble, which has come to... MORE

On March 15, following a meeting with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, on the sidelines of the Antalya Diplomacy Forum, Armenia’s top diplomat, Ararat Mirzoyan, told the Turkish Anadolu Agency that Yerevan was ready to resume bilateral relations with Ankara. Mirzoyan welcomed his Turkish counterpart’s... MORE