The end of summer has brought Russia to the intersection of several long-brewing crises that the authorities sought to mitigate by applying palliative half-measures and postponing hard decisions. In foreign affairs, the sharp escalation of the civil war in Syria has exposed the difficult consequences... MORE

By pursuing the short-term profit goals of Russian oligarchs out of the conviction that this will promote Russia’s interest rather than considering the possible impact of such an approach on Russian national interests, Moscow is alienating Ukraine and Belarus, two Slavic neighbors it has long... MORE

The Mongolian Minister of Mining, Davaajav Gankhuyag, meeting with journalists in an August 9 press conference, confirmed the continuing decline in coal exports to China, Mongolia’s most important trade partner: “The slow speed of economic growth of Mongolia is caused by a drop in China’s... MORE

Among the six countries in the European Union’s Eastern Partnership program, Azerbaijan under its President Ilham Aliyev seems uniquely impervious to Russian forms of leverage and, consequently, unique in receiving respectful treatment from the Kremlin. These two factors are closely connected in Russian President Vladimir... MORE

New initiatives supporting Russian economic and political objectives keep emerging in Ukraine as the date of the expected signing of the Association Agreement with the European Union at the November 28–29 EU Eastern Partnership Summit in Vilnius approaches. On August 9, the leader of the... MORE

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s working visit to Azerbaijan on August 13 (see EDM, April 14) resulted in several agreements of unprecedented scope in the oil and gas sector. Presidents Ilham Aliyev and Putin witnessed the agreements’ signing. These are documents of general intent, merely sketched... MORE

A series of explosions and a deadly fire ravaged the Kilo-type (project 877EKM or Varshavyanka) 3,000-ton submarine INS Sindhurakshak on August 14 as it was moored in Mumbai harbor and preparing to sail the next day, on August 15—India’s Independence Day. Eighteen sailors are feared... MORE

On August 1, Tajikistan’s President Emomalii Rahmon paid a working visit to Moscow where he met with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. Their meeting took place less than a year after the Russian leader had visited Dushanbe last October and a few months before the... MORE

Russian President Vladimir Putin paid a one-day working visit to Azerbaijan on August 13, his first visit to that country since 2006. Two warships of Russia’s Caspian Flotilla anchored in the port of Baku on August 12, demonstrating military muscle (as in 2006) as an... MORE

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu’s visit to Washington last Friday could have repaired some damage from the predictably canceled presidential summit in Moscow, but the meeting failed to produce any substance for bilateral relations, which had deteriorated beyond the point... MORE