Russia

On November 24, a Turkish F-16 fighter jet downed a Russian SU-24M ground bomber near the Turkish-Syrian border after it violated Turkish airspace over the southern tip of Turkey’s most southern province of Hatay. The clash resulted in the...

Over the last two decades, the United States has been the world’s pre-eminent user and supplier of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs).  In 2013, the United States was estimated to have approximately 7,500 drones in operation, ranging from relatively small...

WHAT A DIFFERENCE A week makes. A week ago Tom Ricks of the New American Foundation wrote about the non-military nature of today’s news, and then Russia conducts an invasion of the Crimea. This isn’t to be critical of Tom at all (full disclosure:...

Russian president Putin clearly prefers President Obama over Mitt Romney in the U.S. presidential election. But no matter who wins, all indications are that U.S.-Russian relations are likely to get worse. The reason has nothing to do with future...

Overview Moscow’s relations with its eastern territories, especially the nine provinces of the Russian Far East (RFE), have significant security implications for Russia and for the Asia-Pacific community generally. With 36 percent of the national territory and 25,000 km...

As the Putin regime faces its first serious political challenge in more than twelve years, two recent developments have cast an ominous light on the criminal nature of the highest levels of Russian law enforcement. The first involves Alexander...

The failure of Presidents Obama and Putin to reach agreement over Syria at the G20 summit meeting in Mexico should not have come as a surprise. The Western world has been appalled by the Assad regime’s atrocities but this...

The recent actions of the indelicately named female punk band “Pussy Riot,” whose members on March 3 entered the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow and sang a song on the altar that included an appeal to the Virgin...

The rise of the democratic opposition to the Putin regime is being shadowed by the appearance of a more ominous type of opposition, that of extreme nationalists. At the first protest against falsified elections in Moscow’s Bolotnaya Square on...

A U.S. initiative treating Russia as a serious East Asian partner, engaging in a real dialogue on security threats there, and a strong public expression of U.S. willingness to invest in the Russian Far East (RFE) in return for...