Moscow has abruptly reversed its decision, made as recently as July 2022, to postpone annexation “referendums” in the Russian-occupied Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine. The Kremlin had concluded that the prerequisites to minimally credible referendums, even by Russian standards, were not in place in... MORE

Eight years ago, Russia launched a hybrid war against Ukraine with the aim to seize Crimea and wrest six Ukrainian mainland provinces—Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Odesa—away from Ukraine. The Kremlin applied the Tsarist-era designation Novorossiya to that entire territory. Russian President Vladimir Putin... MORE

Beijing Steps Up the Pressure on Taiwan in August Following the visit to Taiwan by U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi in early August, military forces of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) conducted a high-profile series of military maneuvers around the island, intended... MORE

Since 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed and the Orthodox faithful and leaders in the former Soviet republics and formerly occupied Baltic countries began to press for independence from the Moscow Patriarchate, the Russian Orthodox Church and equally the Russian government have been worried about... MORE

Kuomintang (KMT) Vice Chairman Andrew Hsia led a delegation to China in August, which occurred in the immediate aftermath of the extensive live-fire exercises that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) conducted around Taiwan following U.S. Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit (Focus Taiwan, August 28; Republic of... MORE

Introduction As the world embraces green initiatives on an unprecedented scale, so has the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) — perhaps surprisingly — embraced the green movement, but has done so primarily to support its own political objectives. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has attempted... MORE

On August 20, two Russians and a Ukrainian were arrested in Albania as they tried to enter a defunct military factory in the city of Gramsci. According to Albanian authorities, the detainees were trying to film the factory, and one of them, Mikhail Zorin, sprayed... MORE

The murder of Darya Dugina—the daughter of Aleksandr Dugin, who many view as the instigator for some of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s more aggressive and expansionist ideas—in Moscow on August 20 has sparked three sets of questions: Was her father the real target? Who was... MORE

As anticipated well ahead of the curve (see EDM, July 21, 22), Russia has missed the September 11 target date for staging annexation “referendums” in Ukraine’s occupied Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. Moscow and the local authorities it installed in both regions waited until early September... MORE

In the USSR’s final years, Soviet propagandists and analysts routinely attacked the works of Western writers as being those of “bourgeois falsifiers,” arguing that their books and articles were fictitious because the ideas presented were at odds with Marxism-Leninism and Moscow’s position on most subjects.... MORE