Dagestan's President Mukhu Aliev has denounced a claim by two leading Russian human rights activists that Dagestan has illegal prisons and extrajudicial killings.On September 8, the Memorial human rights center made public an open letter signed by its head, Oleg Orlov, and Lev Ponomarev, head... MORE

On September 9 the United Nations General Assembly condemned the "forced displacement" of the population from Georgia's Abkhazia and South Ossetia territories, strongly upheld the displaced populations' right to return there, and defined these territories as parts of Georgia.Georgia had initiated the General Assembly's resolution... MORE

As the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government has been working on a comprehensive plan to resolve the Kurdish issue, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has broken its self-declared unilateral ceasefire and resumed its terrorist attacks. In two days, PKK attacks claimed ten Turkish... MORE

Following disappointing presidential elections in July, the Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev is continuing to sideline his political opponents and silence the local mass media. Opposition leaders are persecuted with the help of ingenious techniques. Their relatives are threatened with administrative and criminal charges, while opposition... MORE

Two electoral cycles behind most of Eastern Europe, Moldova stands on the brink of the post-post-Communist era. Uniquely in Moldova, moreover, the post-communist transition and the post-post-communist era will be telescoped into a single stage, the start of which is now. Other East European countries... MORE

As Russian President Dmitry Medvedev finally had to admit, the situation in the North Caucasus is slowly changing for the worse and not for the better (Prime-Tass, August 19). Medvedev's admission stands in stark contrast to the public position of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who... MORE

The Arctic Sea, a Malta registered ship with a Russian crew, carrying a cargo of timber worth 2 million Euros from Finland to Algeria, was apparently hijacked on July 24 in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Sweden, and disappeared for several weeks. It... MORE

The plight of the Turkish captain of a tanker intercepted by Georgian authorities while carrying goods en route to Abkhazia highlighted the dilemmas of Turkey's position on the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict.Since the war last August, Georgia has blockaded the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia... MORE

Moldova's parliamentary elections on April 5, subsequent confrontations, and repeat elections on July 28, along with ambiguities and loopholes in the fundamental law, dragged the country's political system into a constitutional crisis. The system is now working its way out of that situation in a... MORE

The Russian factor might well determine the outcome of the January 2010 presidential election in Ukraine. The two leaders in the presidential race, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, both seek Moscow's support. Yanukovych has played the Russian language card in... MORE