Moscow says it has ordered its troops to start returning to their permanent bases following extensive military drills in southern Russia and in and around the occupied Ukrainian region of Crimea, which Moscow annexed in March 2014. The April 22 announcement comes amid heightened tensions with the West over Russia’s …

Critics see echoes of Albania’s feared Communist-era ‘Sigurimi’ in the discovery of a database that purportedly belongs to the ruling Socialists and contains detailed personal data of almost a million voters, each of them assigned to a party apparatchik often on the public payroll. The contents of a database leaked …

Czech accusations the Kremlin was behind a 2014 explosion at a munitions depot that killed two people and the subsequent expulsion of 18 ‘diplomats’ will further damage already strained relations, notwithstanding the president’s pro-Russian leanings. The Czech Republic accused Russia on April 17 of being behind a 2014 explosion at …