Azerbaijan saw several important events in 2018—both domestic and external and sometimes interlinked. And a major takeaway from contextualizing the past year has been Baku’s cautious optimization of its existing balanced foreign policy. In particular, when looked at together, the events of 2018 suggest that... MORE

In just the month of December 2018, Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Alyaksandr Lukashenka of Belarus met three times: in St. Petersburg on the 6th (see EDM, December 12, 2018) and in Moscow on the 25th and 29th. On the two last occasions, they... MORE

Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka took part in the summit of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) in St. Petersburg, Russia, on December 6. During the televised segment of the meeting, Lukashenka launched into a diatribe against unequal natural gas prices that undermine the entire idea of... MORE

During the annual VTB Capital Investment Forum “Russia Calling!” on November 28, President Vladimir Putin called the frictions between Beijing and Washington a “window of opportunity” for Russia to achieve a qualitatively new level of bilateral economic relations with China (RBC, November 28). The following... MORE

Last Friday (December 7), Lithuania became the first country to impose new sanctions against Russia for its forceful and illegitimate action against three Ukrainian ships in the Kerch Strait on November 25 (RBC, December 7). This naval skirmish (see EDM, November 26, 28, 29) was... MORE

In line with China’s continuing westward economic expansion, it may launch free trade talks with Ukraine. Stepan Kubiv, Ukraine’s economy minister, coming back from a visit to China where he met Chinese Vice Premier Liu He last month, said Ukraine asked China to start consultations... MORE

Russia’s sole aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, suffered another mishap while undergoing overhaul work (capitalny remont) at a dockyard in Roslyakovo, near Murmansk. The Kuznetsov was being renovated while moored inside floating dock PD-50—the biggest such dock in Russia and one of the largest in... MORE

The president of the Republic of Lithuania, Dalia Grybauskaitė, joined her counterparts from across Central-Eastern Europe to attend a summit of the Three Seas Initiatives (3SI) in Bucharest, Romania, on September 17–18. At this grouping’s latest top-level meeting, the 12 participating leaders from the Baltic,... MORE

A series of Russian policies have already led several of the country’s regional airline carriers to go out of business and threaten to shutter even more. Specifically, Moscow has ended most subsidies to air carriers, closed the vast majority of regional airports, raised fares, and... MORE

Russian propaganda excels at shifting the blame for every one of the country’s problems—even those caused by bad luck, devastating mismanagement, or natural causes—on to the purported main source of all disasters in the world, the United States. In the first hours after the deadly... MORE