*To read Part One, please click here.   Kyiv has raised its delegation to the Minsk Contact Group from a semi-official level to a full-fledged, senior-level governmental and parliamentary delegation. Kyiv hopes that Moscow will reciprocate in order to accelerate the negotiations and do so,... MORE

Russian authorities rarely resort to such old-fashioned means of communication as written articles. Yet, last week, three key figures in the top leadership—President Vladimir Putin, Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, and former prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, who now holds the newly established position of deputy... MORE

Kyiv is adding Ukrainian citizens from the Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine’s east as members of Kyiv’s delegation to the Minsk Contact Group (see EDM, June 15, 17). But this is only one aspect of the delegation’s thorough overhaul. At the same time, Kyiv has turned... MORE

In March 2019, Dmitry Zhelobov, a specialist on China at Russia’s Urals Federal University, warned that Beijing was shifting from relying on soft power in Central Asia to using hard power. If Russia did not take this threat seriously, he added, China might have its... MORE

Paul Whelan (50)—a Canadian-born United States resident, Marine Corps veteran (discharged for bad conduct) and director of a security firm—was arrested in Moscow, in December 2018, by the Federal Security Service’s (FSB) counter-intelligence arm and charged with espionage. Whelan was incarcerated in the notorious FSB... MORE

Romania’s new national defense strategy for 2020–2024 has just entered parliamentary debate and is already generating international controversy. The 46-page document (Hotnews.ro, June 4) has drawn Moscow’s ire because it defines the Russian Federation as a “threat” in the Black Sea region and indirectly accuses the... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here.   Pro-Ukraine personalities, forcibly displaced from the Russian-occupied Donetsk and Luhansk, participated in the Minsk Contact Group’s extended video-conference session on June 9–15, as invited members of Ukraine’s delegation. This innovative arrangement looks set to continue for the... MORE

The electoral campaign in Belarus is developing like the plot of a mystery novel. Two obstacles seem to stand in the way of its impartial description: the sheer number of new developments and groupthink. The former makes it difficult to see the forest for the... MORE

At a June 2 meeting with members of the “parliament” of Abkhazia, the secessionist Georgian region’s newly elected “president,” Aslan Bzhania, reported that, during his first visit to Moscow (May 5) (Ekho Kavkaza, May 5), he had secured additional Russian funds to fill local budgetary... MORE

As the novel coronavirus crisis unfolded in Italy, several countries came to the rescue, and among them, Russia played a crucial role (see EDM, April 8). Italian authorities acknowledged and praised these efforts. Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio personally welcomed Russian cargo planes when they... MORE