Radical Russian Orthodox fundamentalist Shiigumen Sergey, who controls a monastery in the Urals and has attracted a wide following across Russia, has demanded that Patriarch Kirill and President Vladimir Putin both leave their posts and hand their powers over to him (Ahilla.ru, July 13). That... MORE

The COVID-19 pandemic generated many challenges for trans-Eurasian transportation corridors as borders were shut down, factories closed, and supply chains thrown into disarray. The disease outbreak and subsequent quarantine conditions did, however, offer new opportunities to railway container transportation along the Trans-Caspian route, also known... MORE

The United States Congress may suspend around 15 percent of US financial assistance to Georgia, according to the draft Fiscal Year 2021 State and Foreign Operations Funding bill recently approved by the US House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs. The funding... MORE

On July 6, the Russian shipbuilding complex Zvezda, LLC started construction on a Project 10510 (Lider) icebreaker. Upon its completion (scheduled for 2027), the first ship of this class, named the Rossiya and commissioned by the Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corporation (Rosatom), will become the... MORE

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s political “triumph” in securing approval for the set of amendments to the constitution in a public vote on July 1 (see EDM, July 2) has brought neither cheerful celebrations nor benevolent rewards to loyal subjects. Instead, the government has begun meting... MORE

For the third time in history, Sochi has become the epicenter of the conflict between Russians and Circassians. In 1864, it was the place from which tsarist forces exiled to the Ottoman Empire most of the Circassians who had resisted the Russian advance for more... MORE

Russia’s presidential envoy for conflict-management in Ukraine, Dmitry Kozak, has unilaterally announced a pause in the Normandy negotiation process, pending “clarifications to Ukraine’s positions.” Kozak’s announcements concluded and followed the “Normandy” meeting (Germany, France, Russia, Ukraine), held on July 3–4, in Berlin, at the level... MORE

Ivan Safronov, Jr. (30), a former Kommersant and Vedomosti defense correspondent, was arrested by the Federal Security Service’s (FSB) counterintelligence arm, in Moscow, on July 7, 2020, accused of treason (spying for the West and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization). After graduating from journalism school... MORE

The end of June marked the beginning of a (likely brief) respite in Belarus’s presidential election campaign, but it may prove to be the lull before the storm. After the elimination of former deputy foreign minister and Minsk High-Tech Park founder Valery Tsepkalo’s candidacy because... MORE

Another critic of Chechnya’s pro-Moscow ruler Ramzan Kadyrov was killed in Austria. On the evening of July 4, the man was shot in the head and died in a parking lot next to a shopping center in the Vienna suburb of Gerasdorf. Initially, reports said... MORE