A week ago, after the boost of patriotic emotions in the Victory Day celebrations and the blatantly fake quasi-referenda in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions (see EDM, May 12, 14), Russia appeared ready to make a decisive move into eastern Ukraine. The procedure of voting... MORE

During his official visit to Germany, Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev warned that the Kremlin’s aggression is not limited to Ukraine or the territory of the former Soviet Union, but also threatens Southeastern Europe. “Today we see an aggressive and nationalistic Russia, which pursues a policy... MORE

Today, Russia is being associated almost exclusively with the crisis it has generated in Ukraine. But that is a myopic and excessively complacent view. Indeed, Russia is carrying on a global foreign policy directed at exploiting the United States’ retreats, mistakes or vacuums created by... MORE

In response to Russia’s involvement in the Ukrainian crisis, the United States has tightened its export controls, and this has seriously hurt important Russian space projects. US authorities are apparently denying export licenses that allow European and other foreign communications satellites containing US components to... MORE

Less than ten days after Russia declined to cancel export duties on refined oil products that Belarus sells to the West (see EDM, May 9), President Alyaksandr Lukashenka managed to wrest some critical concessions from the Kremlin. Following his May 8 visit to Moscow, Lukashenka... MORE

President Vladimir Putin and Russian diplomacy have recently invented the concept of “South-Eastern Ukraine” as a would-be political entity. Moscow promotes this idea as part of its project to dismantle the Ukrainian state through “federalization.”Following the overthrow of then-president Viktor Yanukovych by the Kyiv Maidan... MORE

On May 11, self-declared “people’s councils” purported to hold “referendums” in approximately 20 or 25 towns or parts thereof, held by armed rebels in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk provinces (Donbas) (see EDM, May 9). The organizers claimed high turnouts and an overwhelming affirmative answer to... MORE

Tanks and missiles rolled as usual through Moscow’s Red Square on May 9, marking Victory Day against Nazi Germany. In Russia, this commemoration has changed over the last decade from a moment of reflection on the great sacrifice that secured the destruction of Hitlerism to... MORE

On April 29, a meeting of the national leaders of the planned Eurasian Economic Community (EEC), Vladimir Putin of Russia, Nursultan Nazarbaev of Kazakhstan, and Alyaksandr Lukashenka of Belarus, took place in Minsk. From the Belarusian standpoint, it proved to be a disappointment. Specifically, the... MORE

On April 28, Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev paid a working visit to Russia’s capital, where he delivered a lecture at the Moscow State University, twenty years after his first similar speech there in 1994. Rather expectedly, the president’s speech was dedicated to the issue of... MORE