Latest Eurasia Daily Monitor Articles
Guest Commentary: Russian “Security Net” Must Not Be Abandoned
In December 2008, when these lines were written, it was difficult to understand the prospects of the world and domestic financial-economic crisis. For Russia, however, the current turbulence may be useful, because it offers a good pretext for changing many elements of social policy to... MORE
Investigation Deepens Divisions Within Turkey
As Turkish police have been uncovering arms and ammunition buried deep beneath the ground in various places in Ankara, divisions within the Turkish political scene, the judiciary, and the intelligence services, as well as the politically powerful Turkish Armed Forces (TSK), have widened. The caches... MORE
Russia Suspected of Trying to Take over Ukraine’s Gas Transit Network
Russia was supposed to resume pumping gas to the EU through Ukraine on January 13 following trilateral Moscow-Kyiv-Brussels talks, but the Russia-Ukraine gas row is far from over. Neither the issue of Kyiv’s debts, the very existence of which Ukraine denies, nor the conditions of... MORE
Politicization in the Turkish Judiciary System Deepens
The Ergenekon investigation has sparked a controversy about whether the Justice and Development Party (AKP) is using public prosecutors to subdue the opposition. The debate about whether the judiciary system is being politicized resurfaced once again, after the most recent phase of the Ergenekon investigation... MORE
Tajikistan Claims Border Security Improving
Tajikistan’s border security agencies, severely challenged by the continued flow of narcotics and arms across the country’s porous borders, have released official statistics and details on their successes over the past year. On January 7 Colonel-General Khayriddin Abdurahimov, chief of the main border directorate within... MORE
Russia’s Gas Disinformation Game
Disinformation operations, as every former KGB operative knows, can be an invaluable tool in winning a war. “Deza,” as it is called by the old boys who once worked on Dzerzhinsky Square in Moscow, is an art meant to be used carefully by professionals; otherwise... MORE
Russia Hiding Gas Shortfall by Touting Multiple Export Routes
Russia is using the gas supply crisis, which it has itself triggered, to induce a contest among consumer countries over imports of Russian natural gas. Russian-produced gas has become a commodity in short supply when measured against Russia’s internal requirements and its existing export commitments.... MORE
Can Egemen Bagis Revive Turkey’s Stalled EU Accession Process?
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan selected Istanbul parliamentary deputy Egemen Bagis as the new chief negotiator for Turkey’s membership negotiations with the European Union. Erdogan also moved the Secretariat General for EU Affairs (ABGS) from the Foreign Ministry to the Prime Minister’s office under Bagis,... MORE
Belarus Devalues Its Currency
On January 2 residents of Belarus learned that the national currency—the Belarusian ruble (known locally as the zaichik or hare)—had been devalued by 20.5 percent against the US dollar, falling from around 2,200 to 2,650. In November and December the administration of President Alyaksandr Lukashenka... MORE
U.S. and Georgia Sign Strategic Partnership Charter
On January 9 in Washington, barely a week before the change of administrations there, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Minister of Foreign Affairs Grigol Vashadze signed the U.S.-Georgia Charter on Strategic Partnership. The document and the overall guiding concept primarily involve issues of hard... MORE