On December 4, the French newspaper Le Monde published a report arguing that at least 15 Russian spies allegedly belonging to “Unit 29155” of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU) have been using the Haute-Savoie... MORE

Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has confirmed a planned surge in the number of warships to be equipped with Tsirkon and Kalibr cruise missiles, which follows President Vladimir Putin placing similar emphasis on these systems during his recent series of meetings with defense industry officials,... MORE

Introduction China’s military ambitions in the Arctic, and its growing strategic partnership with Russia, have rung alarm bells in many governments. In May 2019, for the first time, the U.S. Department of Defense annual report on China’s military capabilities had a section on China’s military... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. Adding to its vulnerabilities vis-à-vis Moscow, Kyiv’s natural gas transit contract with Gazprom expires on December 31. Ukraine’s law on a “special status” for the Russian-controlled Donetsk-Luhansk expires also on December 31. That law exists only on paper... MORE

High-level political discussions about “the Ukraine crisis” (a diplomatic euphemism for Russia’s aggression against Ukraine) are scheduled to resume on December 9, in Paris, in the “Normandy” format—Russia, France, Germany, Ukraine—after a hiatus of more than three years. The Normandy format has continued to operate... MORE

On August 23, 2019, Georgian national and former Chechen rebel commander Zelimkhan Khangoshvili (40) was fired on by an assailant on a bicycle, in a Berlin public park. Khangoshvili died on the spot, shot twice in the head. German police quickly apprehended the suspected killer... MORE

The Russia-Africa Summit and Economic Forum, held in Sochi on October 23–24, was presented as an event of great geopolitical and geo-economic importance (see EDM, October 28), explicitly showcasing the competitive advantages Moscow is purportedly ready to employ in its struggle for influence on the... MORE

This week (December 2), while opening a series of meetings in Sochi on military development and the further enhancement of Russia’s Armed Forces, President Vladimir Putin set down the main tasks for the modernization of the Russian navy—the Military-Maritime Fleet (Voyenno-Morskoy Flot—VMF). Putin explained that... MORE

An espionage scandal has erupted in Serbia over the possible recruitment of a senior Serbian official by Russian special services. A video posted online by someone using the YouTube handle “Kdjuey Lskduf” shows two men meeting in a parking lot, with one of them handing... MORE

Russia regularly mixes demonstrations of military might and claims of devotion to cooperation with the West as a means of weakening Western solidarity. And Moscow has been fine-tuning this conspicuously contradictory signaling ahead of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) 70th anniversary, which is being... MORE