Latest Eurasia Daily Monitor Articles
RUSSIA AND UZBEKISTAN PLEDGE TO BOOST TIES, BUT PROBLEMS REMAIN
Although Tashkent has moved to re-join the Moscow-led post-Soviet security framework, bilateral issues remain between Russia and Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan moved to revive its membership in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), and this month the lower house of the Uzbek parliament approved a draft law... MORE
WAS LITVINENKO THE LATEST VICTIM OF A KREMLIN POWER STRUGGLE?
The death of former Federal Security Service (FSB) lieutenant colonel Alexander Litvinenko in London on November 23, and the subsequent release of his statement blaming his poisoning on President Vladimir Putin, has morphed into a serious international scandal. British Home Secretary John Reid said on... MORE
SUMMIT OF “TECHNICAL” DISAGREEMENTS AND DIMINISHING TRUST
The Russia-EU summit held in Helsinki, Finland, on November 24 was by no means loaded with expectations, thus it was hardly a disappointment. The central point of its pre-planned agenda was the formal opening of negotiations on a new framework Partnership and Cooperation agreement, since... MORE
OSCE’S YEAR-END DRAFT DECLARATION YIELDS TO RUSSIA ON ISTANBUL COMMITMENTS
With barely ten days remaining until the OSCE’s year-end conference in Brussels, the draft ministerial declaration (the centerpiece of the conference documents) would weaken the West’s hand and strengthen Moscow’s on the most salient hard-security issue in Europe: Russia’s 1999 commitments to withdraw its forces... MORE
THE CHECHEN EXECUTION SQUAD COMES TO MOSCOW
On Saturday evening, November 18, machine-gun fire erupted on Leninsky Prospect in downtown Moscow. Special police forces and a bomb squad quickly arrived at the scene and discovered one fatality. They had no problem identifying the victim, despite his multiple head wounds: Movladi Baisarov, the... MORE
INTRANSIGENCE IN MOSCOW, SUKHUMI, TSKHINVALI AFTER UN RESOLUTION AND OKRUASHVILI RESIGNATION
Western approval of the UN Security Council’s October 13 resolution criticizing Georgia’s return to the upper Kodori Valley, and the November 7 resignation of Irakli Okruashvili as Georgia’s defense minister, are not thus far proving conducive to the stated goals of those moves. The goals... MORE
CLOUDS GATHER OVER YUSHCHENKO’S INTERIOR MINISTER
The team of Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych has mounted an offensive against Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko, one of a handful of ministers loyal to President Viktor Yushchenko. Lutsenko spearheaded the anti-corruption campaign that was launched after Yushchenko came to power in 2005. Several Donetsk-based... MORE
MILINKEVICH FACES NEW TASKS
The leader of the United Democratic Forces of Belarus (UDF), Alyaksandr Milinkevich, has signed an agreement with the Party of the Belarusian Popular Front. According to the leader of the initiative group for the formation of the movement "For Freedom," Viktar Karnienka, the agreement is... MORE
KREMLIN SIGNS POWER-SHARING TREATY WITH TATARSTAN
In early November Russian President Vladimir Putin sent the State Duma a draft of a power-sharing treaty between the federal government and Tatarstan, an autonomous republic in the Volga region. Power-sharing agreements between Moscow and Russian regions were common under Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s,... MORE
ROMANIAN PRESIDENT CONCERNED BY EUROPEAN DEPENDENCE ON RUSSIAN ENERGY
Interviewed in the current issue of the weekly Moskovskie Novosti (November 17), Romanian President Traian Basescu follows up on his remarks at a Jamestown Foundation conference in Washington (see Jamestown press release, August 3), calling for a Caspian-Black Sea-focused European energy supply strategy. No European... MORE