Latest Eurasia Daily Monitor Articles
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
MOSCOW HOSTS THREE SECESSIONIST LEADERS
Sergei Bagapsh, Eduard Kokoiti, and Igor Smirnov, Russian-installed leaders respectively of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transnistria, conferred with Russian government officials in Moscow on November 16-18, held a joint news conference, and were featured extensively on Russian state television channels. All three made it clear... MORE
GAZPROM RESHUFFLE FOLLOWS WARNINGS OF DOMESTIC GAS SHORTAGE
As Russia faces a natural gas shortage and the government mulls higher domestic prices for 2007, the gas monopoly Gazprom fired its top executive in charge of domestic supplies and some exports to the Commonwealth of Independent States. Following a government report that Russia could... MORE
U.S. FOREIGN POLICY IN CENTRAL ASIA: TIME FOR CHANGE?
On November 10 John Ordway, U.S. Ambassador to Kazakhstan, attempted to play down speculation that the Republican defeat in the U.S. mid-term elections could presage changes in Washington’s priorities in Central Asia. In fact, basing his assessment on the continuity of U.S. foreign policy in... MORE