Russian top officials—in particular, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (RIA Novosti, April 27) and Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev (Kommersant, April 8)—have for weeks been talking about the deepening crisis in Russia’s relations with the United States while at the same time expressing some hope that... MORE

In his April 29 interview to Euronews, Belarus’s Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei had this to say about the crackdown on the protest movement that followed the August 9 presidential elections: “Perhaps the authorities sometimes acted too harshly. But this was an appropriate reaction to […]... MORE

Chechen officials and Ingush activists reached an agreement to hold negotiations on the contentious administrative border between Chechnya and Ingushetia. On April 25, the Ingush Mehk-Khel movement (a.k.a. Council of Elders of Ingushetia) publicly appealed to the speaker of the Chechen Parliament, Magomed Daudov, via... MORE

During the ongoing modernization of Russia’s Armed Forces, increasing attention has turned to developing and exploiting unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAV). In Russian military exercises and over battlefield in Ukraine and Syria, the overwhelming use of UAVs has focused on... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. President Vladimir Putin’s remarks about possibly nationalizing the Russian defense industry (DI) (Interfax, March 31) reinvigorated a debate on measures to optimize this strategically crucial yet decreasingly profitable sector of the country’s economy (see Part One in EDM,... MORE

On March 24, the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) announced it had exposed and impeded the activity of two illegal private military companies (PMC)—Doncorp Ukraine and its parent entity, Donbas Battalion Corporation. A pair of former Ukrainian people’s deputies—the former commander of the Donbas Battalion,... MORE

A recent wave of arrests of ethnic Ukrainians across the Russian Federation for supposedly organizing extremist groups and planning terrorist attacks has sparked fears in Ukraine that Vladimir Putin may seek to exploit these incidents to stage a provocation inside Russia. Such a scheme would... MORE

At the end of each winter training cycle, the Russian Armed Forces typically hold extensive readiness checks in the month of April. So unsurprisingly, on April 6, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that the Russian military would carry out 4,048 such snap exercises at 101... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. “We should not let Mr. Zelenskyy and his team off the hook, but let them twist [wriggle, squirm] there,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently told reporters (RIA Novosti, April 28). This is Lavrov’s own style of signaling... MORE

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s apparent plan to emerge from his extended self-isolation with new energy did not quite work out as expected, and he clearly needed to pause. Last week (April 28), United States President Joseph Biden touted his achievements at the symbolic 100-day mark... MORE