Last month’s (August 24) visit of the United States Secretary of Defense James Mattis to Ukraine was the first such trip by a Pentagon head in the last ten years. Before arriving in Kyiv, Mattis told reporters he planned to commemorate Ukraine’s Independence Day, underscore... MORE

Until September 4, 2017, the president of Uzbekistan had not paid a state visit to Kyrgyzstan in 17 years. But Uzbekistan’s new head of state, Shavkat Mirziyaev, is determined to build a “security belt” around his country. And this has served as a catalyst to... MORE

Recent reports confirm that Turkey has agreed to purchase the S-400 Triumph Russian air and missile defense system (TRT World, August 23). Under the deal, worth $2.5 billion, Turkey will receive two S-400 batteries (Hurriyet Daily News, July 17). The system is advertised as being... MORE

For most of the last two decades, specialists on Central Asia have asked what will happen when one or another of its longtime authoritarian leaders passes from the scene. Many have made particularly dire predictions, including a descent into chaos or the rise of a... MORE

The fast-escalating crisis in East Asia, driven by the chain of nuclear and missile provocations by the North Korean regime, has upset the carefully prepared agendas of regional politics. In early September, North Korea cast a shadow over talks at the BRICS (a loose political... MORE

The United States’ ambassador to Yerevan, Richard M. Mills, praised the participation of an Armenian unit in the US-led Noble Partner 2017 exercise, held on July 30 to August 12, in Georgia, along with Georgian, British, German, Slovenian, Turkish and Ukrainian military forces. Ambassador Mills... MORE

Not only beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In the absence of attention-grabbing cataclysms, the most talked about issue related to Belarus depends on who you ask. Thus, ordinary Belarusians are mostly preoccupied with price hikes, the cost of utilities in particular, and... MORE

Speaking to journalists after the conclusion of the latest leadership summit of the so-called BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), held in Xiamen, China, President Vladimir Putin threatened to continue the tit-for-tat cycle of diplomatic expulsions and diplomatic property takeovers with the... MORE

The Embassy of the United States in Tbilisi, the capital city of Georgia, has announced that it is ready to issue US visas to Russian citizens, if they apply to the embassy with such a request (News.am, August 26). The statement by the US diplomatic... MORE

The black smoke rising from the chimney of the Russian consulate in San Francisco, last Friday (September 1), made for a perfect symbol of the deepening degeneration of Russia’s relations with the United States. Moscow was given only two days to shut down its diplomatic... MORE