Russia has rejected the German government’s proposal to deploy monitors of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to the Azov Sea and Kerch Strait. The mission would have been tasked with monitoring shipping in those two bodies of water and report on... MORE

Moscow’s dispatch of strategic bombers and heavy transport planes to Venezuela on December 10, and its subsequent promise to Washington to remove them only four days later (see below) highlights both what has and has not changed in the in the “new cold war” between... MORE

Russia’s relations with the West steadily worsened throughout 2018, and hopes that the presumed positive chemistry between United States President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, might help find some way to reverse this trend never materialized. The long-awaited full-scale Trump-Putin summit in... 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

The Azerbaijani military portal Azerideffence.com recently published information about Baku acquiring French ASTER 30-SAMP/T and VL MICA air-defense missile systems. A representative of the company producing these missile systems—MBDA—confirmed the information (Azeridefense.com, December 1). Several days later, the Russian newspaper Kommersant informed that Moscow had... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. *To read Part Two, please click here. *To Read Part Three, please click here.   On November 24, one day before Russia’s November 25 attacks on Ukrainian ships, Russia’s State Secretary and Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Grigory Karasin... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. *To read Part Two, please click here.   Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea and the resulting de facto border changes have overturned the geographical and political foundations of the 2003 Russia-Ukraine treaty on the Azov Sea and Kerch... 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

On November 19, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev paid a long-awaited official visit to Belarus, where he met with his counterpart, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka. On this occasion, the Belarusian and Azerbaijani state news agencies praised the level of bilateral strategic cooperation, widely citing Lukashenka’s words to... MORE