“We [in Belarus] have a genre [best described as] complaint songs. We love to take pity on ourselves and to cry out for compassion,” noted Igar Marzalyuk, who heads the Committee for Education, Culture and Science in the Belarusian parliament. Speaking recently at a roundtable... MORE

The government of Kazakhstan has approved an action plan, on October 28, to implement the country’s cybersecurity concept—“Cyber Shield”—by 2022 (Zakon.kz, November 1). The document outlines key areas of state policy that will be required to build a modern yet reliable system to mitigate and... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. Since the beginning of this year, 18 Russian governors have “voluntary” resigned from their positions. In their place, President Vladimir Putin appointed “temporarily acting governors.” Some of these “temporary” regional heads were subsequently elected during local gubernatorial elections,... MORE

Over the past year, the Russian Federation experienced two large waves of resignations of governors. In spring 2017, the heads of seven regions—Perm krai, Novgorod and Ryazan oblasts, as well as the republics of Mari El, Udmurtia, Buryatia and Karelia—lost their posts. In autumn, the... MORE

Over the course of the past year, the Kremlin has been pushing the notion of the existence of a “civic Russian nation” (rossiiskaya natsiiya). This idea is meant to unify the ethnically, religiously and politically divided population of the Russian Federation. However, it is likely... MORE

On November 5, a cargo train from Kokshetau, North Kazakhstan, carrying 30 containers of wheat, arrived in the Turkish harbor city of Mersin, on the Mediterranean coast. What made this event so notable was that this was the first train from Kazakhstan to use the... MORE

Since President Shavkat Mirziyaev’s state visit to Moscow in April 2017, bilateral relations between his country of Uzbekistan and Russia have been steadily expanding. And the frequency of subsequent bilateral exchanges suggests that this trend will most likely continue with the full support of both... MORE

On October 24, Eugen Sturza was sworn in as Moldova’s minister of defense by Parliament Speaker Andrian Candu. This put an end to an eleven-month-long battle over the appointment between pro-Russian President Igor Dodon and the nominally pro-Western government, controlled by Vlad Plahotniuc. After Dodon... MORE

Despite being the second-largest oil producer and exporter in the former Soviet Union, only behind Russia, Kazakhstan has been historically plagued by chronic deficits of fuel for domestic consumption. National energy security is at the top of the country’s priority list, yet little progress has... MORE

This week (November 14), the Russian Ministry of Defense posted on its official social media accounts a report about the Washington-led coalition and the United States military in northeastern Syria supposedly conspiring with Islamic State (IS) fighters. The Russian military accused US forces of refusing... MORE