
Latest Eurasia Daily Monitor Articles

Kazakhstan Approaches OSCE Chairmanship as a “National Strategic Project”
Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev has instructed the government to form a State Commission on Preparations for Kazakhstan's Chairmanship of the OSCE. Personally chairing an enlarged inter-departmental meeting on this subject, Nazarbayev described Kazakhstan's chairmanship of the OSCE in 2010 as a "national strategic project." The... MORE

Azerbaijan’s Independent Foreign Policy Strengthened by Recent High Profile Meetings
As Azerbaijan's neighbors, Georgia and Russia, commemorated the anniversary of the military conflict which erupted in August 2008, Azerbaijan showcased its foreign policy as both balanced and independent. Several high level presidential visits to Baku this summer indicate that the Azerbaijani capital is becoming the... MORE

The Role of the Russian Orthodox Church in the North Caucasus
On August 15 the Russian news agency ITAR-TASS reported that "unknown suspects desecrated the Orthodox holy cross in the mountains of Adygeya." The report came from Maikop the capital city of the Republic of Adygeya, located about 40 miles to the north of Sochi, the... MORE

More Russian Troops Headed to Ingushetia
According to independent sources, several additional Russian army units are headed to the special-operations zone where the insurgency in Ingushetia has mounted relentless strikes (www.ingushetia.ru, August 14). As these troops arrive in the area with five Grad missile launchers and several armored personnel carriers, it... MORE

Ankara Explores Turkish-Russian Consortium to Construct Nuclear Power Plant
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's August 6 visit to Ankara for talks with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan secured some twenty agreements covering energy, trade and other fields. Consequently, Ankara has made its most immediate priority to lift the regulation requiring the full inspection... MORE

Rakhmon’s Son Mooted to Succeed Father in the 2020’s
Tajikistan's political future is difficult to predict: whether the country will be able to use its economic potential or become yet another failed state owing to its corruption and criminality largely depends on President Emomali Rakhmon's policies. Nonetheless, one thing has become clearer over the... MORE

Black Thursday in the North Caucasus
Last Thursday was Dagestan's deadliest day in recent years. While all three North Caucasus republics of Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan reported deadly clashes between insurgents and police forces that day, the latter claimed most of the casualties.In the Dagestani city of Buinaksk, at approximately 8:00... MORE

Russian Manipulation of History: “the Art of Interpretation”
To mark the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact by Russia (USSR) and Nazi Germany on August 23, 1939, the Foreign Intelligence Service (Sluzba Vneshnei Rzvedki or SVR) published a book of declassified intelligence reports and documents to prove that "the Molotov-Ribbentrop... MORE

Sochi Meeting Shows Russian Impact on German Foreign Policy
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's August 14 meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Sochi illustrated how this business-centered "strategic partnership" can distort or weaken German foreign policy. In that meeting the Chancellor failed to mention (or perhaps to deem worth mentioning) three major Russian actions... MORE

Sino-Turkish Relations Normalize
During the violent ethnic clashes between the Turkic Uyghurs and Han Chinese, in China's northwestern province of Xinjiang on July 5-6, Sino-Turkish relations soured as a result of Turkish public opinion and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan harshly criticizing the Chinese government's handling of the... MORE