Turkey’s plan to build a canal bypassing the Bosporus Strait and potentially upsetting the Montreux Convention (see EDM, February 9) along with Russia’s movement of warships from the Caspian to the Sea of Azov via the Volga–Don Canal in order to threaten Ukraine (see EDM,... MORE

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would be holding no cards in the event of a one-on-one meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Zelenskyy is known to believe that he holds the card of his personal charm and the moral card, but those do not count with... MORE

In a recent column published by RIA Novosti, the deputy chairperson of the Russian Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, writes that Russia’s relations with the United States have reverted back to a full “Cold War” (RIA Novosti, April 23). Medvedev served as Russia’s caretaker president from... MORE

The next meeting of the Intergovernmental Council of the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) will be held in the central Russian city of Kazan, on April 29–30 (TASS, March 17). A key agenda item for the EEU member states may reportedly be to discuss the... MORE

Military tensions along the Russian-Ukrainian border reached a near-boiling point in recent weeks. During March–April, Moscow amassed as many as 110,000 troops and 56 permanent-readiness battalion tactical groups (BTG) close to eastern Ukrainian territory, according to the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) of... MORE

Russia is downscaling its buildup of military forces in Ukraine’s vicinity after three weeks of an elaborate war scare. The Russian pullback under way since April 22, however, is neither complete nor irreversible: a repeat buildup of forces around Ukraine is anticipated for September with... MORE

Two important and connected developments in the second half of April—military exercises in Crimea (RIA Novosti, April 22) and the wider growing tensions with Ukraine—cogently reiterated the military-political importance to Russia of this illegally annexed peninsula. Since 2014, Moscow has been heavily investing in building... MORE

Many observers are treating Russia’s pullback of land forces from the Ukrainian border as the end of the crisis—even some of those experts who acknowledge the Kremlin has not given up its aggressive posturing against Ukraine (Voennoe Obozrenie, April 25). Yet that belligerent stance may... MORE

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced earlier this year that a number of large infrastructure projects had been launched in the territories liberated from Armenian occupation as a result of the 2020 Second Karabakh War. Importantly, he added that friendly countries and partners would be involved... MORE

Aside from the April 22 Russia-Belarus summit, which did not turn out to be groundbreaking, three other stories have dominated news headlines pertaining to Belarus over the past week or so: the allegedly uncovered coup plot against President Alyaksandr Lukashenka; a peculiar twist in relations... MORE