Latest Eurasia Daily Monitor Articles
UNDER KUCHMA, UKRAINE SENT MISSILES TO IRAN AND CHINA
Since President Viktor Yushchenko was inaugurated on January 23, Ukraine's Interior Ministry (MVS), Security Service (SBU), and Prosecutor-General's office have made daily revelations about massive, high-level corruption under former president Leonid Kuchma. One new scandal is that Kyiv sent 12 long-range surface-to-air missiles to Iran... MORE
STRIKING COAL MINERS IN KAZAKHSTAN ARE MERELY PAWNS IN A MUCH BIGGER GAME
Emotions are running high in Kazakhstan as miners protest anticipated wage cuts and layoffs at the Indian–owned Mittal Steel Company. In the past two weeks a series of rallies and pickets has rocked the otherwise dormant towns of Temirtau and Shakhtinsk in central Kazakhstan. Mittal... MORE
AZERBAIJAN AND CHINA MOVE TO INCREASE SECURITY AND ECONOMIC COOPERATION
President Ilham Aliev's March 17 visit to China marked a new, more expanded phase in relations between Azerbaijan and China. Although contacts between the two countries have remained relatively friendly since 1991, the last time their top leaders met was in 1994 when the late... MORE
TAIWAN ISSUE CLOUDS RUSSIA-CHINA JOINT MILITARY EXERCISES
Russian Chief of General Staff Yuri Baluyevsky was dispatched to Beijing March 17-20 in order to finalize plans for unprecedented joint war games this fall. However, the upcoming drill wields a double-edged sword. Official pronouncements have sounded decidedly optimistic. Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and... MORE
PUTIN’S RESIDUAL EUROPEANISM AND CREEPING SELF-ISOLATION
The Russian media paid about as much attention to President Vladimir Putin's weekend visit to Paris than it did to his meeting with the victorious team from the Paris-Dakar road rally (Ezhednevny zhurnal, March 17). Little is known about his talks with French President Jacques... MORE
UKRAINE SEEKING PARTNERS FOR ODESSA-BRODY OIL PIPELINE EXTENSION
Meeting in Kyiv on March 21, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko and the German and Polish Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Joschka Fischer and Adam Rotfeld, discussed using and extending the Odessa-Brody oil pipeline as originally intended for transporting Caspian oil to European countries. Following the meeting,... MORE
Kyrgyz Crisis Reaches Bishkek — Rumors Suggest Akayev has Fled Country
One week after runoff elections for parliament, the government of Kyrgyzstan lost administrative control over all large cities in the southern part of the country to opposition protesters. On March 20, for the first time since the bloody events in Aksy in 2001, the Kyrgyz... MORE
Putin’s Team in Disarray Over Oil Money
Yet another quarrel between Gazprom and Rosneft, Russian state-owned energy companies that are due to merge but cannot agree on conditions, hardly qualifies as news (Financial Times, March 16). Their respective CEOs -- Alexei Miller and Sergei Bogdanchikov -- have been at odds since the... MORE
Mixed Response to Vendors’ Protests in Belarus
Protests by Belarusian entrepreneurs against the imposition of an 18% value-added tax (VAT) on all imports from Russia have continued for the past two weeks. The reaction of the Lukashenka government has been described aptly as a "stick and a carrot" policy: a combination of... MORE
Putin in Kyiv
On March 19, Russian President Vladimir Putin paid a one-day working visit to Ukraine. The event was designed to signal a major improvement in the atmosphere of bilateral relations. For Putin, it was both a fence-mending move toward Ukraine and an international damage-limitation move after... MORE