In just the month of December 2018, Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Alyaksandr Lukashenka of Belarus met three times: in St. Petersburg on the 6th (see EDM, December 12, 2018) and in Moscow on the 25th and 29th. On the two last occasions, they... MORE

Unlike the year before, Russia entered 2019 with low expectations and deepening disappointment in its own faltering revival. In contrast, the World Cup provided a focus for anticipation in 2018, and the presidential elections, pre-determined as the outcome was, raised hopes for increases of pensions... MORE

Climate change has become a central battleground in the PRC’s bid to brand itself as a leading partner and spokesman for the developing world. Beijing has earmarked billions to fund initiatives aimed at reducing carbon, supporting green energy, and promoting climate change resilience across the... MORE

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev traveled to Belarus on November 19 (see EDM, December 6). During his visit, both governments signed a number of key agreements, including regarding the supply of Belarusian air-defense weapons to Azerbaijan. President Aliyev praised the level of “military-technical cooperation” with Belarus,... MORE

On November 14, Dmitry Peskov the press secretary for the president of Russia, stated, “I am not a supporter of the theory that Russia is making some sort of drift to the East […] these words were said by political scientists… China will not be... MORE

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has offered a sanitized account of the failed “Normandy” meeting (Russia, Ukraine, Germany, France) that discussed the crisis in the Azov Sea and Kerch Strait. The meeting was held in Berlin on December 11 in almost complete secrecy (see accompanying article),... MORE

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