During the summit between presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev in London on April 1, it was decided in the words of Obama, "to prepare by the end of this year a legally binding and sufficiently bold" new nuclear arms control agreement to replace the... MORE

Russian news agencies reported today that Ingushetia's president, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, who was severely wounded on June 22 when a suicide bomber detonated a car near his motorcade in Nazran, remains in critical condition in a Moscow hospital. Meanwhile, Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov says he has... MORE

On June 23, the Turkish Parliament approved a motion that will authorize the government to renew the term of the Turkish peacekeeping force contributing to the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), for one more year, effective from September 5. The parliamentary discussions preceding the... MORE

President Viktor Yushchenko has strongly condemned the 1944 deportation of Crimean Tatars on many occasions and ordered the Security Service (SBU) to open a special investigative unit examining crimes against humanity committed by the Soviet regime against them. Since the 1998 Ukrainian parliamentary elections, Rukh... MORE

The Russian government has pledged to revive its economic ties with Arab nations. However, Moscow's relations with the Arab world now hardly sound reminiscent of the Soviet-era alliance, as the Kremlin has struggled to cooperate with major Arab energy producers.The Russian first Deputy Prime Minister... MORE

The Russian government is now openly backing Surgut Neftegaz's surreptitious acquisition of a large stake in the Hungarian MOL oil and gas company. The acquisition is legally contested in Hungary. The Russian government's political intrusion nullifies Surgut's thesis that the acquisition was a regular, free-market... MORE

On June 12, the liberal left Taraf daily published an unclassified document outlining an alleged action plan for the military to combat the "reactionary activities" against secularism. Allegedly the "Action Plan against Reactionaries (Irtica)," was prepared by senior staff Colonel Dursun Cicek and defines the... MORE

On June 17, following the CSTO and SCO summits, Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev sacked the country's first civilian Defense Minister Daniyal Akhmetov. The presidential press service refused to comment on the reasons for the dismissal, while confirming that the former defense minister and chairman of... MORE

In the latest in an escalating series of attacks in the North Caucasus, a car carrying the president of Ingushetia, Yunus Bek-Yevkurov, was blown up on June 22. An estimated 70 kilograms of explosives detonated as the president's motorcade was passing by in Nazran, the... MORE

In early 2009 a number of European countries suddenly found themselves ensnared by events over which they had little, if any control. Poland and Hungary discovered that gas supply contracts they had signed with the company RosUkrEnergo, 50 percent owned by Gazprom, would not be... MORE