by Alexander MelikishviliOn Friday, June 5, in a three-hour interview given to the chief editors of the mainstream Russian news publications - the newspapers Izvestia and Zavtra and journals Rossiiskaya Federatsiya Segodnya (Russian Federation Today) and Soyuznoe Gosudarstvo (Union State) - the President of Belarus... MORE

by Roman KupchinskyOn June 5, 2009, the Ukrainian stated-owned oil and gas concern, Naftohaz Ukrayina, paid Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly $475 million for gas delivered in May 2009. By beating the June 7th deadline by two days, Naftohaz once again threw a monkey wrench... MORE

Russia Pushes for WTO Membership at the St Petersburg International Economic ForumRussia renewed its efforts to join the World Trade Organization on the margins of the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, which concludes today. The E.U. Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton, the United States Trade Representative... MORE

by Alexander MelikishviliRecent news reports in the Russian and Israeli press and media may shed light on the quid pro quo arrangement that was apparently concluded by Moscow and Tel Aviv in the area of military-technical cooperation. Tel Aviv's conditionality with regard to Russia's unprecedented... MORE

by Roman KupchinskyThe European Commission will send a delegation of officials to Moscow and Kyiv in order to ascertain the facts surrounding the latest gas-related tensions between the two neighboring countries the website Ukrayinska Pravda reported on June 4, 2009. The delegation comes on the... MORE

by Roman KupchinskyCompounding Russia’s ongoing problems with its European and C.I.S. gas clients is the geopolitically sensitive case of Turkmenistan. On June 2, 2009 The Moscow Times reported that Gazprom demanded that this prime Central Asian gas producing country either slash the price of gas... MORE

by Roman KupchinskyWith demand for natural gas in Europe at new lows, the Russian gas industry is going through a period of decreased profits and dropping production. Russia’s gas giant, Gazprom, the majority of which is owned by the Russian state, has been hit particularly... MORE

On Thursday, May 28, the Russian government delegation led by the Prime Minister Vladimir Putin traveled to Belarus to participate in another session of the Council of Ministers of the Belarusian-Russian Union State, a chimera of bilateral state integration that has been dragging on with... MORE

[Photo Credit: St Petersburg-based businessman Alexander Ebralidze. Photo courtesy of Itar-Tass.] An influential member of the Parliament of Georgia and the chairman of its Committee on Defense and Security, Givi Targamadze made a number of revelatory remarks during the weekly program Position on the Rustavi... MORE

One Suspected Organizer of the Mukhrovani Mutiny Killed and Two Wounded in a Shootout with Police in GeorgiaLate on Wednesday, May 20, the Ministry of Internal Affairs (M.I.A.) of Georgia carried out a special operation to detain the three suspected organizers of the Mukhrovani mutiny... MORE