Moscow’s mistrust of the Armenian government headed by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan dates all the way back to his rise to power last year in the so-called “Velvet Revolution.” And that mistrust has persisted despite Pashinyan’s various foreign policy gambits designed to win Russia’s confidence... MORE

During his brief tenure, the brash Russian ambassador to Minsk Mikhail Babich had repeatedly offended Belarusians and even President Alyaksandr Lukashenka. But his replacement by the more diplomatic Dmitry Mezentsev will not bring any fundamental change to Vladimir Putin’s overarching drive to absorb Belarus into... MORE

Despite modern Russia’s constrained resources, its foreign policy has long operated on a global scale. And one key area of this worldwide remit is increasingly Africa, where arms sales and security cooperation are again driving the diplomatic outreach. Thus, the past several weeks saw several... MORE

Russian diplomacy is well known for its apparent readiness to engage with all parties to the multiple conflicts in the Middle East, and this characteristic has recently produced another awkward tangle of opportunistic intrigues. President Vladimir Putin fancies himself a master of communicating with difficult... MORE

Relations between Turkey and Greece are the most fractious of any pair of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) 29 member countries. Disputes range from contested offshore hydrocarbon exploration to Athens granting political refugee status to two of eight Turkish officers who fled to Greece... MORE

Speaking at the 11th Arctic Council Ministerial meeting in Rovaniemi, Finland, on May 7, US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo warned that the pattern of aggressive Chinese behavior in other regions may give important indications to how China will act in the Arctic (Rambler.ru, May... MORE

Russians are not unanimous in their attitude toward Belarus. According to popular Belarusian online portal Tut.by’s Artyom Shraibman, politically influential Russians fall into three camps: Technocrats-Monetarists (e.g., Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev or former deputy prime ministers Arkady Dvorkovich and Anatoly Chubais), Imperialists (many “siloviki”—representatives of... MORE

On May 25, the Hamburg-based International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) ordered Russia to release and repatriate to Ukraine all 24 sailors and three naval vessels, seized through military force off Crimea’s coast exactly six months earlier (see EDM, November 26, 2018),... MORE

The international community has devoted significant attention to the actions of Russian authorities in occupied Crimea to repress, marginalize and force out Crimean Tatars, a crime against humanity that involves harassment, arrests, and other kinds of mistreatment that are all too visible (Krymr.com, May 29).... MORE

Last fall, during the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) massive Trident Juncture 2018 military exercises, 31 allied and partner countries, over 50,000 personnel, 10,000 vehicles, 150 aircraft and some 60 warships, including the carrier USS Harry Truman, gathered to practice large-scale maneuvers in Norway as... MORE