Moscow’s mistrust of the Armenian government headed by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan dates all the way back to his rise to power last year in the so-called “Velvet Revolution.” And that mistrust has persisted despite Pashinyan’s various foreign policy gambits designed to win Russia’s confidence... MORE

On December 29, 2018, the head of the occupying government in Crimea, Sergey Aksenov, proposed to transport Ukrainian offshore oil and natural gas drilling rigs (“nationalized” by Russia after the Crimean annexation) from the Black Sea to the Syrian coastal shelf (UAWire, December 30, 2018).... MORE

Since the reform and modernization of Russia’s Armed Forces was initiated in late 2008, the General Staff leadership has been persistent in its appeals to the military scientific community to meet the challenges stemming from these complex processes. An essential ingredient in this public discussion... MORE

Two texts on issues of existential importance for Belarus appeared at the end of May. The author of the first is Sergei Lepin, an archpriest of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Belarusian exarchate (regional entity) and a chairperson of its Information Department. On several occasions in... MORE

During his brief tenure, the brash Russian ambassador to Minsk Mikhail Babich had repeatedly offended Belarusians and even President Alyaksandr Lukashenka. But his replacement by the more diplomatic Dmitry Mezentsev will not bring any fundamental change to Vladimir Putin’s overarching drive to absorb Belarus into... MORE

Despite modern Russia’s constrained resources, its foreign policy has long operated on a global scale. And one key area of this worldwide remit is increasingly Africa, where arms sales and security cooperation are again driving the diplomatic outreach. Thus, the past several weeks saw several... MORE

The government in Yerevan, formed by Nikol Pashinyan after the “Velvet Revolution” and snap parliamentary elections in 2018, is apparently facing its first serious crisis. Specifically, the start of the trial of former president Robert Kocharyan (in office in 1998–2008) and some other officials charged... MORE

A joint venture led by Russia’s Novatek has chosen the French-American company TechnipFMC to spearhead its new Arctic LNG 2 liquefied natural gas project on the Gydan Peninsula, in northern Siberia. The same Western firm previously oversaw the work on Novatek’s first LNG facility on... MORE

Russian diplomacy is well known for its apparent readiness to engage with all parties to the multiple conflicts in the Middle East, and this characteristic has recently produced another awkward tangle of opportunistic intrigues. President Vladimir Putin fancies himself a master of communicating with difficult... MORE

Relations between Turkey and Greece are the most fractious of any pair of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) 29 member countries. Disputes range from contested offshore hydrocarbon exploration to Athens granting political refugee status to two of eight Turkish officers who fled to Greece... MORE