In mid-February 2015, the Ukrainian military was teetering on defeat. A sustained Russian-led winter offensive had begun a month earlier, when the dirt roads and fields in Ukraine’s southeastern Donbas region were frozen and drivable. The Ukrainians had been ousted from the Donetsk airport and... MORE

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov traveled to Azerbaijan on December 2–3. This came after his November 11 Yerevan visit, which caused an uproar in Baku due to Lavrov’s reference to the ethnic-Armenian population in Karabakh as the “people of Nagorno-Karabakh” and his oblique suggestion of... MORE

On December 4, the French newspaper Le Monde published a report arguing that at least 15 Russian spies allegedly belonging to “Unit 29155” of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU) have been using the Haute-Savoie... MORE

Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has confirmed a planned surge in the number of warships to be equipped with Tsirkon and Kalibr cruise missiles, which follows President Vladimir Putin placing similar emphasis on these systems during his recent series of meetings with defense industry officials,... MORE

On the personal level, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a great impression at the “Normandy” group’s summit in Paris, on December 9. Zelenskyy outshone Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and French President Emmanuel Macron at this highly publicized heads-of-state/government gathering—the first after... MORE

On November 27, in an interview on Georgian television, the country’s de facto leader—the chairperson of the ruling Georgian Dream party and Georgia’s sole billionaire, Bidzina Ivanishvili—denounced American non-governmental organizations (NGO), including the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI). Specifically, Ivanishvili... MORE

In order to maintain its independence and freedom of action, Belarus has long sought to develop relations with a variety of countries beyond the Russian Federation. In recent years, its efforts to establish and widen economic and even political ties with the European Union and... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. In the run up to and during the Russia-Africa Summit and Economic Forum, held in Sochi, on October 23–24 (see EDM, October 28), Russia’s high-level officials repeatedly emphasized their country’s unyielding commitment to equality in partnership with African... MORE

The top leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France are meeting in Paris today (December 9), in the “Normandy” format, after a three-year pause at that level. This quadrilateral group oversees the implementation of the Minsk “accords” to settle the “Ukraine crisis” (a euphemism for... MORE

As the December 8 deadline to sign the so-called roadmaps for further Russian-Belarusian integration drew closer, anxiety reached a fever pitch among politicized Belarusians. On Friday, December 6, Prime Ministers Sergei Rumas of Belarus and Dmitry Medvedev of Russia met in Sochi; and the next... MORE