“We are beginning the new year without any problems whatsoever, even small ones, in our relations as we have settled them all,” President Alyaksandr Lukashenka observed as recently as November 18, while receiving Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (Svaboda, November 28). Yet, barely nine days... MORE

Georgian authorities are trying to devise new tactics and a new style of relations with Moscow after the November 24 signing of the Russian-Abkhazian agreement On Alliance and Strategic Partnership (Kavkavsky Uzel, November 24; see EDM, October 29, November 24). However, with Western leaders currently... MORE

Since this summer, rumors have swirled that Moscow plans to create a Bessarabian People’s Republic on the territory of Ukraine’s Odesa Oblast. Some analysts have suggested that this would allow Moscow to build a bridge to the Transnistria region in Moldova and cut off Ukraine... MORE

In the eyes of his supports and foes alike, Qasem Soleimani is a man larger than life. In the West, Soleimani, the commander of the elite Quds forces of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, is viewed as the fearsome evil genius behind most Iranian intelligence and... MORE

According to a new Russian law, beginning on January 1, 2015, citizens of Tajikistan wishing to enter Russia will no longer be able to use their domestic passports, but will instead need to produce an international passport, a diplomatic passport or a seafarer’s identity document.... MORE

“We have been flying with one wing and we badly need to engage the other one,” President Alyaksandr Lukashenka once quipped, in reference to Belarus’s asymmetric international engagements—too much with Russia, too little with the West. The imbalance, of course, is still there and so... MORE

On November 20, Russian-occupied South Ossetia’s (Tskhinvali region) separatist regime declared that it is negotiating a new “comprehensive agreement on integration” with Russia, which will raise the relationship between the two sides to a “qualitatively new level,” especially in the military sphere (regnum.ru, November 20).... MORE

Last weekend (November 21), Ukraine marked the first anniversary of the EuroMaidan—the public protests in Kyiv that lasted through the hard winter of discontent and brought down the corrupt regime of Viktor Yanukovych on February 21. As its war for state survival continues to rage,... MORE

Tensions between Russia and the United States, deepened by the Ukraine crisis, have now affected nuclear security cooperation—an area that had previously resisted the fallout from earlier disputes over ballistic missile defense, Georgia and other issues. At the beginning of November 2014, media leaks revealed... MORE

Three inter-related themes engage attention in the Belarusian and international media: the ambivalent image of Belarus, its upcoming presidential elections, and the Belarusian economy. The economy appears to be the linchpin of this triad. It informs Belarus’s image, if only to some extent. But although... MORE