As the global economy continues its slow recovery from the 2008–2009 worldwide recession, armament sales appear to have been one of the few recession-proof export sectors. The greater Middle East has been main emporium for such purchases. While the United States and Russia remain the world’s... MORE

The National Assembly of Armenia affirmed Karen Karapetyan as the country’s new prime minister, on September 13. Karapetyan’s previous career was predominantly linked in various ways to Russia’s natural gas producer Gazprom (with the exception of ten months in 2010–2011, when he served as mayor... MORE

Sunday’s runoffs in 50 precincts—which became necessary because none of the candidates in these single-mandate districts garnered an absolute majority of the vote in the first round of the October 8 Georgian parliamentary elections—were overwhelmingly won by the ruling Georgian Dream-Democratic Georgia (GDDG). On October... MORE

The opposition United National Movement (UNM) came in distant second in the Georgian parliamentary elections that took place on October 8 (see EDM, October 13). The party of former president Mikheil Saakashvili received only 27.11 percent of the vote for the party list. And it... MORE

“Information warfare,” according to the Russian definition of the term, combines technology (i.e., cyber warfare and electronic warfare) with psychology (“winning hearts and minds”) (Encyclopedia.mil.ru, accessed October 27). When commenting on the psychological aspect of Russian information operations, foreign observers generally focus on the strategic... MORE

The Russian aerospace forces (Vozdushno Kosmicheskye Sily—VKS) continue to bomb the Syrian opposition, as Russia’s Iranian-led allies carry on land attacks against the rebel-controlled half of Aleppo. But meanwhile, Russia’s two largest warships—the carrier Admiral Kuznetsov and nuclear battle cruiser Pyotr Velikiy—have reached the Mediterranean.... MORE

Uzbekistan’s diplomats may never have been quite as busy as Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov has been in just the past several weeks. In addition to attending or hosting a series of routine meetings, Kamilov has also become a goodwill ambassador for Uzbekistan’s interim president, Prime... MORE

The former leader of the now-banned “Russians” opposition movement as well as the outlawed skinhead gang Slavic Union (Slavianskii Soiuz), Dmitry Demushkin, was placed under house arrest by the Russian authorities on October 21. Ostensibly, the move was connected to an ongoing legal case against... MORE

On October 19, the Russian Ministry of Defense finalized the creation of a special communications system (“closed segment data transfer”) that can function autonomously from the global Internet (Izvestia.ru, October 19). Reportedly, this so-called “Military Internet” allows for exchanging secret electronic data (even marked “Top... MORE

Karachaevo-Cherkessia, a small republic in the Northwestern Caucasus, was among the first areas of the Russian Federation to witness a rise in Islamic jamaats during the 1990s. Yet today, Karachaevo-Cherkessia is a relatively quiet place, unlike neighboring Kabardino-Balkaria and most other North Caucasus republics to... MORE