Russia has opposed the United States’ policy in Afghanistan for years. Indeed, Moscow’s own support for the Taliban, in the form of intelligence sharing and arms transfers, goes back to about 2014 (see EDM, January 6, 2016). Therefore, President Donald Trump’s stated intention to withdraw... MORE

In early December 2018, Army General Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s chief of the General Staff and First Deputy Defense Minister gave his annual address to foreign military attachés in Moscow. His overall message was sober, assessing the challenges within the international security system as well as... MORE

Azerbaijan saw several important events in 2018—both domestic and external and sometimes interlinked. And a major takeaway from contextualizing the past year has been Baku’s cautious optimization of its existing balanced foreign policy. In particular, when looked at together, the events of 2018 suggest that... MORE

Over the past several months, Belarus has found itself in yet another conflict-in-progress with Russia. As always, it started with a cascade of economic issues, primarily centered on Russia’s so-called oil “tax maneuver” and the financial losses it will incur on Belarus (see EDM, October... MORE

Moscow has dramatically increased the number of divisions and brigades in its Armed Forces even as it has reduced the total size of its uniformed personnel. The result, independent Russian military analyst Aleksandr Golts says, is the return of the “paper divisions” that were characteristic... MORE

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev traveled to Belarus on November 19 (see EDM, December 6). During his visit, both governments signed a number of key agreements, including regarding the supply of Belarusian air-defense weapons to Azerbaijan. President Aliyev praised the level of “military-technical cooperation” with Belarus,... MORE

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has offered a sanitized account of the failed “Normandy” meeting (Russia, Ukraine, Germany, France) that discussed the crisis in the Azov Sea and Kerch Strait. The meeting was held in Berlin on December 11 in almost complete secrecy (see accompanying article),... MORE

Russia has rejected the German government’s proposal to deploy monitors of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to the Azov Sea and Kerch Strait. The mission would have been tasked with monitoring shipping in those two bodies of water and report on... MORE

Moscow’s dispatch of strategic bombers and heavy transport planes to Venezuela on December 10, and its subsequent promise to Washington to remove them only four days later (see below) highlights both what has and has not changed in the in the “new cold war” between... MORE

Russia’s relations with the West steadily worsened throughout 2018, and hopes that the presumed positive chemistry between United States President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, might help find some way to reverse this trend never materialized. The long-awaited full-scale Trump-Putin summit in... MORE