Latest Eurasia Daily Monitor Articles
TURKEY PREPARES TO WELCOME TALABANI FOR “WORKING VISIT”
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani is due to arrive in Ankara tomorrow (March 7) for a three-day visit, with energy cooperation and the presence of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in northern Iraq expected to top the agenda. However, Turkey has refused to classify the trip... MORE
SOUTH STREAM GAS PROJECT DEFEATING NABUCCO BY DEFAULT
Gazprom’s blitzkrieg capture of five European Union member countries for its South Stream project, preempting the EU- and U.S.-backed Nabucco project, has shattered the credibility of Brussels’ and Washington’s energy security agendas. Country after country (excepting the lone holdout, Romania) have succumbed to the Kremlin-backed... MORE
TOP YELTSIN-ERA FIGURE REPORTEDLY ON MEDVEDEV’S LIST OF POTENTIAL APPOINTEES
Vedomosti reported on March 4 that Russia’s president-elect, Dmitry Medvedev, held a victory gathering at his campaign headquarters on the evening of March 2 to which both journalists and “associates who helped him win” were invited. According to the newspaper, the latter group consisted of... MORE
PARTY OF REGIONS DISCUSSES LANGUAGE, NATO AT FORUM
Ukraine’s main opposition force, the Party of Regions (PRU), organized what it called a “congress of people’s deputies of all levels” in the eastern town of Severodonetsk on Saturday, March 1. It discussed topics such as official languages and NATO membership. Almost 3,700 representatives of... MORE
TURKEY WIDENS TRADE TIES WITH IRAN
Since March 2003 U.S.-Turkish relations have been strained over Iraq. Now Washington has an additional cause for disquiet, as Turkish-Iranian economic relations go from strength to strength, further weakening Washington’s 1996 Iran-Libya Sanctions Act. Bilateral Turkish-Iranian trade exceeded $8 billion in 2007, up 19.5% over... MORE
BLOODY CRACKDOWN ENDS ARMENIAN POST-ELECTION UNREST, FOR NOW
The unrest sparked by Armenia’s February 19 presidential election, praised by the West but considered fraudulent by many Armenians, could have hardly had a worse denouement. At least eight people were killed and more than a hundred others wounded on the night of March 1-2,... MORE
MOSCOW BACKTRACKING IN NEGOTIATIONS WITH GEORGIA ON BORDER AND CUSTOMS CONTROL
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s February 21-22 Moscow visit, nominally for a multilateral Commonwealth of Independent States summit, centered on carefully prepared bilateral talks by the Georgian delegation with outgoing president Vladimir Putin and ministerial counterparts. The visit succeeded in ameliorating the atmosphere of Georgia’s relations... MORE
FREQUENT CRASHES CAST DOUBT ON RUSSIAN-MADE JETS IN KAZAKH AIR FORCE
On the morning of February 12, a MiG-29 fighter jet from the Kazakh Air Force crashed while landing at a military airfield in Almaty region. Just seconds before the plane hit the ground, crew members ejected from the cockpit, but because of the low altitude,... MORE
GAZA RAID FURTHER STRAINS ISRAELI-TURKISH TIES
Israel’s recent military incursion into Gaza has further strained its already troubled relationship with Turkey and highlighted the two countries’ divergent attitudes toward Hamas. For many Turks, the contrast between the muted U.S. reaction to the Israeli raid and its insistence on a rapid curtailment... MORE
WILL PRIME MINISTER PUTIN SERVE AT THE PLEASURE OF PRESIDENT MEDVEDEV?
As of 10 am, Moscow time, on March 3, Russia’s Central Election Commission was reporting that with more than 99% of the votes in the March 2 presidential election counted, President Vladimir Putin’s handpicked successor, Dmitry Medvedev, won 70.23% of the vote. That means 51,938,974... MORE