In October the Chinese Communist Party enshrined Xi Jinping’s “One Belt, One Road Initiative” (OBOR) in its constitution. The move again demonstrates how the sweeping plan linking China and Europe via land and sea routes now is at the heart of China’s foreign policy and... MORE

The just-ended 19th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress has confirmed Xi Jinping’s status as China’s “Emperor for Life.” The 64-year-old “core leader” has filled the country’s highest-ruling councils—the Politburo and the Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC)—with his cronies and loyalists. No cadres from younger generations were... MORE

Russian President Vladimir Putin made an unexpected visit to Ankara, on September 28 (Kremlin.ru, September 28). The reason for Putin’s trip was to discuss with Turkish authorities a host of regional and bilateral issues: the northern Iraqi Kurdistan referendum; the establishment of a safe zone... MORE

Few coastal Ukrainian cities have historically suffered as many instances of destruction only to be rebuilt time and time again as Ochakiv. And today, the Ochakiv Naval Base is set to host a $750,000 maritime operations center, which the United States Navy is building for... MORE

Numerous governments have historically sought to use military spending as a means to solve domestic economic problems and generate growth. Indeed, this pattern has been so widespread that, in Russia, many in the defense establishment have long argued that spending more on the military and... MORE

Newsworthy material from and about Belarus tends to either concentrate on Belarus’s relations with Russia, relations with the European Union or on domestic issues, including the economy. When it comes to headlines, external drivers of Belarus’s development often eclipse its domestic scene. Last week, however,... MORE

Taking ownership of and “conquering” the Arctic are themes Russian authorities love to amplify. But sometimes, the harsh Northern reality interferes. The crash of an Mi-8 helicopter in Svalbard (Spitsbergen), last Thursday (October 26), with eight lives lost, was one such occasion. Norway launched a... MORE

Life in parts of Kenya’s traditionally Muslim coastal region has become a nightmare of beheadings and midnight raids by masked assailants, compounded by the ineptitude of local security forces. In Lamu County, a historic center of Swahili culture, growing ethnic and religious tensions have proved... MORE

A long-term turf war over defense spending, between factions within President Vladimir Putin’s entourage, has raged for more than a year in Moscow. The so called “party of peace”—Putin’s liberal-inclined economic advisors and officials, led by former finance minister Aleksei Kudrin—is promoting defense spending cuts... MORE

When Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud was welcomed in Moscow, on October 5–8, both Russian and Saudi media sources rushed to call his visit an important milestone in bilateral relations (TASS, October 8). But with the initial euphoria from Salman’s trip to... MORE