Prosecutors in Qatar have asked that two Russian special services agents accused of assassinating former Chechen separatist President Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev in February be sentenced to death. Dmitri Afanasyev, an attorney representing the accused Russians, said the prosecution had asked for the death penalty in the... MORE

The past week has seen surprising developments on several fronts in Russia's war on corruption. Taken together, they remind us of the magnitude of the corruption that has such deep roots. But these events also demonstrate that the Russian state is sporadic and selective in... MORE

A statue of Yuri Andropov, the Soviet leader and KGB head, has been erected in front of the building housing the Karelia Federal Security Service (FSB) directorate in Petrozavodsk, Karelia's capital city. The 3.5-meter statue stands in a square on a street named after Andropov,... MORE

The US-led coalition is obsessed with establishing a corridor sanitaire along the Afghanistan border with Pakistan, creating other security holes inside Afghanistan. Most notably, suspected Taliban insurgents are now operating in districts well inside the border and are blatantly attacking foreign aid workers and their... MORE

At a June 2 meeting of the mixed monitoring commission in Tskhinvali, the Georgian delegation demonstrated its lack of confidence in Major-General Svyatoslav Nabzdorov, demanding that he be recalled by Russia. Nabzdorov is the Russian commander of peacekeeping forces in South Ossetia. He is being... MORE

As world oil prices climb to new heights, officials and experts in Moscow revise upwards their production plans and propose quick solutions for clearing the bottlenecks in oil export capacity. In this stream of optimistic commentary, one key channel for delivering the Caspian oil to... MORE

On June 4 in Prague, Russian left-wing activists from the three Baltic states led the founding conference of the "Russian Party of the European Union." Main initiators of the party are: Tatyana Zhdanoka from Latvia, Georgii Bystrov from Estonia, and Sergey Dmitriev from Lithuania. The... MORE

Russian soldiers continue to die in Chechnya, as the unpopular conflict shows no sign of changing from its dirty and unpredictable nature. Separate recent incidents in Grozny, causing injuries to a platoon commander and conscript soldier from the interior troops, and in the Chechen village... MORE

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, in a rare news conference broadcast by Afghanistan Television from his Golkhana Palace in Kabul on June 3, defended the steps he has taken so far to ensure that the September national elections are fair and free. Karzai also used the... MORE

A pair of bombings over the last several days-one targeted at people, the other at infrastructure-would seem to highlight the ongoing terrorist threat that Russia is facing. Yet investigators are reportedly leaning toward the theory that the blasts were the result of criminal-commercial disputes rather... MORE