On July 13, in the capital city of Astana, Kazakhstan hosted a meeting of the foreign ministers of the five Caspian littoral states. The officials gathered to discuss a draft convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea and other issues related to multilateral... MORE

Many from Turkey’s North Caucasian diaspora supported President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan during the failed July 15 coup. At least some North Caucasians, however, have doubts about extending their support to the Turkish president. The Circassian activists are divided over how much Circassians should be involved... MORE

President Vladimir Putin is not taking a summer vacation. He has instead maintained a busy schedule of meetings with government officials and regional governors. But his grip on the steering wheel of Russia’s foreign and domestic policy is far from steady. The heavily censored Russian... MORE

The evolving political dynamics of Belarus are causing an unprecedented shift in policy stances and viewpoints that were heretofore considered immovable. Thus, some of the opinions that used to be routinely associated with the West-friendly opposition are today often being embraced by the government itself.... MORE

On September 18, 2016, Chechnya along with the rest of Russia will vote in the elections to the Russian State Duma. Chechens will also elect the governor of their republic, where the only plausible candidate is Ramzan Kadyrov. The three alternative candidates for Chechnya’s governor... MORE

Europe is not the only theater of acute discord between Russia and the United States; nor is the alleged militarization of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) the only issue that angers Moscow in this context. Russian ire over US policy also focuses on, and... MORE

*To read Part Two, please click here. It was a summit of modest expectations and modest results for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Warsaw on July 8–9. These results are of an interim nature: building blocks for further decisions at upcoming ministerial meetings,... MORE

Latvia experienced a population decline of 8.7 percent in the last year. From among the 28 members of the European Union (the United Kingdom has not yet officially left), only Lithuania has had a larger drop in the number of its residents (11.3 percent). Of... MORE

People in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge have been going quietly, one by one, to Tengiz Batirashvili, the younger brother of Umar Shishani (Batirashvili), to express their condolences in connection with Umar Shishani’s death. Unlike his brothers Umar and Tamaz, Tengiz Batirashvili did not go to the... MORE

The doping scandal, which may exclude Russian athletes from this summer’s Rio de Janeiro Olympics, is dominating the political news in Moscow at the moment. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) executive board has called on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to ban all Russian athletes... MORE