By mid-March 2014, Russian “little green men” took full control of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. And on March 18, President Vladimir Putin made a jubilant address to the Russian Federation Council (upper chamber of parliament) on the “reunification” with Crimea, asserting, “In people’s hearts and minds,... MORE

A major challenge for Central Asia’s oil and natural gas industry has always been how to transport petroleum products from the landlocked region to global markets. That issue resurfaced last week (March 6) in Uzbekistan, where a delay in building a pipeline to export more... MORE

President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s seven-hour marathon with reporters, on March 1 (see EDM, March 7), continues to reverberate in the media. Most of the discussions fall within one of four discernible themes. The first has to do with Lukashenka’s expressed proposal to revise the constitution. He... MORE

Moscow’s recent decision to extradite a Talysh activist to Azerbaijan was a not-so-subtle sign that reinforced previous impressions the Russian government is tilting away from Armenia and toward Azerbaijan in the South Caucasus. The Kremlin is anything but happy with Yerevan’s new government (see EDM,... MORE

The steady and costly buildup of military might in the Arctic has apparently reached a level sufficient for Russia to claim sovereign rights over international waters along the entire length of the Northern Sea Route (known in Russian as Sevmorput), from the Barents Sea in... MORE

The newly elected president of Georgia, Salome Zurabishvili, is using the first hundred days of her presidency to demonstrate her country’s ongoing commitment to integration into Euro-Atlantic structures. This was recently clearly evidenced by her visits to Brussels, Paris and Berlin. Some experts believe that... MORE

Since Shavket Mirziyoyev’s succession of Islam Karimov as president in 2016, concerns have been mounting regarding the apparently growing ties between Russian and Uzbekistan. Indeed, Uzbekistani-Russian cooperation has been intensifying, reinforced by multi-day official visits by both President Mirziyoyev to Russia in April 2017 and... MORE

Official Russian discourse on the status of relations with China is as upbeat as it can possibly be. Andrei Denisov, the long-serving ambassador to Beijing, claims that the two countries are enjoying the best period ever in the history of their partnership (Russiancouncil.ru, March 3).... MORE

Newly elected Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili made her first regional visit to the neighboring country of Azerbaijan. Her trip was of critical importance in terms of both bilateral relations and wider geopolitical developments in the South Caucasus. Specifically, Zourabichvili’s arrival in Baku, on February 27,... MORE

The Russian Academy of Military Sciences held its annual defense conference on March 2. The theme this year covered future wars, armed conflicts and the challenges facing the defense sector. The president of the Academy, Army General (ret.) Makhmut Gareev, provided the opening speech. However,... MORE