A couple of decades ago, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka was branded in Brussels as “Europe’s last dictator.” At that time, Russia’s strongman, President Vladimir Putin, was cultivating a close partnership with his United States counterpart, George W. Bush, and publicly talked about cooperating with the... MORE

Border conflicts of various levels of intensity occur regularly in Central Asia, but the latest clashes between nationals of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan that broke out at the end of April was the deadliest such incident in a long time, with 55 killed and 266 injured... MORE

Over the past couple months, Russia and the West (the European Union and the United States) have mutually expelled more than 150 diplomats—high numbers in quick succession that, some observers argue, “did not even happen during the Cold War” (Newsru.com, April 24). And those numbers... MORE

On May 17, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin approved the concept of Moscow’s chairmanship of the Arctic Council (2021–2023) along with a plan of events. In particular, “the protection of the Arctic environment, including climate change,” was named as one of four high-priority goals during... MORE

At the end of April, Minister Fahrettin Koca announced that the Ministry of Health had granted emergency use authorization in Turkey to Russia’s COVID-19 vaccine (Anadolu Agency, April 30).  Sputnik V became the third vaccine to receive such approval, after China’s Sinovac and the Pfizer-BioNTech... MORE

Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s decision to force down an airliner so as to be able to arrest journalist Roman Protasevich—the editor-in-chief of the influential anti-regime Telegram channel NEXTA (see EDM, September 23, 2020 and May 24, 2021)—sparked mixed reactions in Moscow. Those diverging opinions owe... MORE

On May 17, Armenia’s caretaker prime minister, Nikol Pashinian, convened a Security Council meeting to discuss the latest tense developments on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border (see EDM, May 18; see below). In addressing the participants, he rejected rumors about the so-called Zangezur corridor (which would stretch... MORE

On Sunday, May 23, Belarus made headlines around the world for diverting a commercial flight. Ryanair’s Boeing 737-8AS, in transit over Belarus from Athens to Vilnius, had to make an emergency landing in Minsk under the pretext of a bomb planted on board, the alarm... MORE

The meeting between US State Secretary Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Reykjavik, Iceland, last week (May 19), was not supposed to resolve any disagreements, but it did clarify them (see EDM, May 20). Primarily, their extensive conversation was ostensibly focused on... MORE

Most commentators in Russia, Ukraine and the West tend to treat the Moscow-backed breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic (DPR, LPR), which together control about 3.3 million people in eastern Ukraine, as a single whole. But in reality, Russian analyst Yury Kovalchuk argues,... MORE