On February 1, Russian and then Belarusian media reported some unexpected news: Moscow decided to set up a border zone between its Smolensk, Bryansk and Pskov regions and Belarus (RIA Novosti, February 1). The decision was met with an immediate negative reaction in Minsk, where... MORE

The sharp escalation in artillery battles in the Donbas (eastern Ukraine) war zone one day after the January 28 telephone conversation between United States President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin was certainly not a coincidence. No leaks about the content of the 45-minute-long... MORE

German Chancellor Angela Merkel received Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on January 30, in Berlin, for an “exchange of views” on the “conflict in Ukraine,” “the peace process and the implementation of the Minsk armistice” (Bundeslanzlerin.de, January 27, 30). Those code words are widely used in... MORE

With multiple global crises competing for urgent public attention, it is not surprising that Western media and governments have failed to keep pace with Russia’s double game in Afghanistan. But in fact, Russian actions there provide a revealing “tutorial” on Moscow’s real approach to the... MORE

On January 26, Viktor Dolidze, Georgia’s state minister on European and Euro-Atlantic integration, declared that his country will “probably” not participate in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) upcoming May summit at the new Headquarters, in Brussels (iPress.ge, January 26). Dolidze’s vague clarification raised eyebrows... MORE

Russia’s increased engagement in the Libyan civil war, in particular the “attention” that the Kremlin is paying to Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, one of the conflict’s major actors since the ousting of Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, has not gone unnoticed by the Italian government (Repubblica,... MORE

The strategically placed Gotland is the largest island in the Baltic Sea, with an area of 3,183.7 square kilometers—that is, slightly smaller than California’s Sacramento county. The island is situated 330 km from the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad Oblast and 110 km from the Swedish... MORE

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is not satisfied with its organizational structure and has been trying to adjust it to create a more effective joint war fighting capability. 2016 saw dramatic restructuring of the former four General Departments and seven Military Regions (MR), and the... MORE

Last month (December 2016), the eastern half of Syria’s prewar most-populated city, Aleppo, held by opposition fighters since 2012, fell under a relentless assault from joint Iranian, Russian and pro-government Syrian forces The Syrian opposition fighters, together with some of the civilian population, were allowed... MORE

Ukroboronprom, the state entity responsible for Ukraine’s military-industrial complex, announced that it would begin joint production with the United States company Aeroscraft of a Ukrainian variant of the M16 assault rifle—to be renamed the WAC-47. Sergei Mykytyuk, the director of Ukroboronprom subsidiary Ukroboronservis, told journalists... MORE