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

In late evening, on November 26, the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament) implemented Martial Law in selected regions of Ukraine that is to last until December 26 (Rada.gov, November 26). President Petro Poroshenko pushed the legislature to adopt this measure after the Russian Coast Guard attacked... MORE

The Azerbaijani military portal Azerideffence.com recently published information about Baku acquiring French ASTER 30-SAMP/T and VL MICA air-defense missile systems. A representative of the company producing these missile systems—MBDA—confirmed the information (Azeridefense.com, December 1). Several days later, the Russian newspaper Kommersant informed that Moscow had... MORE

Despite recent concerns from some security analysts that a new Military Doctrine of the Union State of Russia and Belarus will include provisions for the establishment of a Russian military base on Belarusian soil (see EDM, October 30), the document will likely undergo only cosmetic... MORE

As Russia’s Armed Forces continue to benefit from the process of military modernization, a growing area of concern for North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) planners is Russia’s continued steps to boost anti-access, area denial (A2/AD) capabilities close to its borders. An important feature of this... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. *To read Part Two, please click here. *To Read Part Three, please click here.   On November 24, one day before Russia’s November 25 attacks on Ukrainian ships, Russia’s State Secretary and Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Grigory Karasin... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. *To read Part Two, please click here.   Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea and the resulting de facto border changes have overturned the geographical and political foundations of the 2003 Russia-Ukraine treaty on the Azov Sea and Kerch... MORE