Kyiv’s western allies continue to express concern over the buildup of Russian troops on the border with Ukraine (see EDM, November 8, 29). US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States was “concerned about reports of atypical Russian military activity” (Voice of America—Russian... MORE

In the past several weeks, relations between Moscow and Washington nosedived, with multiple overlapping potential crises and increasingly toxic rhetoric aggravating an already dangerous situation. The Ukrainian crisis has been simmering to one degree or another since Russia took over Crimea in 2014 and sponsored... MORE

Ukraine is actively preparing to implement new legislation in the field of Territorial Defense (Armyinform.com.ua, November 2)—namely, the Law of Ukraine “On the Fundamentals of National Resistance,” which was signed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last July (President.gov.ua, July 29). This Law stipulates that Ukraine’s... MORE

On November 15 and 17, Angela Merkel, the outgoing chancellor of Germany, telephoned Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka (RBC, November 17). While, on November 14 and 16, Belarus’s Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei had two phone conversations with Josep Borrell, the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. While Kyiv, Berlin and Paris pursue (with varying degrees of intensity, frantically in Kyiv’s case) a high-level “Normandy” meeting as a goal for its own sake, without conditions or a clear agenda, Moscow is setting maximalist conditions for... MORE

The extrajudicial murder of a local Pamiri activist by state security police in the mountainous and impoverished Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast of Tajikistan has sparked violent protests in that region’s capital, Khorog. The mass demonstrations have so far claimed at least three other lives and left... MORE

On November 1, supporters of Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) abandoned their two-week long protests and marched to the Pakistani capital Islamabad after the group signed a deal with the government, whose details were initially kept secret. The deal was facilitated by several religious scholars and leaders of... MORE

A loud explosion was heard in the early hours of November 7 in the fortified area in Baghdad known as the “Green Zone.” This was followed by heavy gunfire in the Green Zone, which hosts government offices and U.S. and other Western diplomatic missions. The... MORE

On November 15, the Russian military successfully tested a dual-use missile-defense/anti-satellite interceptor to destroy in orbit an old, dysfunctional Tselina-D intelligence-gathering satellite dubbed “Kosmos-1408.” The “dead” target satellite was flying at some 500 kilometers above the ground and had been launched during the Cold War,... MORE

Belarus and Moscow have signed a new Union State Military Doctrine, though the document remains unpublished. This comes within the context of the Belarus crisis that began with President Alyaksandr Lukashenko’s disputed reelection on August 9, 2020, and recently worsened due to the migrant issues... MORE