From January 20 through 24, tens of thousands of angry protesters rallied in Chisinau each day in -10° C (14° Fahrenheit) temperature to demand the resignation of the just-installed government, dissolution of the parliament—both institutions are now controlled by the billionaire Vladimir Plahotniuc—and new parliamentary... MORE

Since the start of the year, military exercises have taken place in both Chechnya and Dagestan. News reports emphasize that the exercises have been taking place in the mountains. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, motorized infantry snipers of the Southern Military District who are... MORE

Low oil and commodity prices have crippled the Russian economy, caused a massive devaluation of the ruble and a contraction of government budget expenditures. At a conference of the All-Russian Peoples Front (VNF—Vserossiysky Narodni Front—a pro-Kremlin populist organization) in Stavropol in the North Caucasus this... MORE

The Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Energy of Georgia, Kakha Kaladze, and a top official at the Russian energy giant Gazprom, Yelena Burmistrova, failed to reach an agreement during the latest round of talks in Vienna (Rustavi2, January 21). The Georgian Ministry of Energy... MORE

On January 19, President Vladimir Putin met with the governor of Karachaevo-Cherkessia, Rashid Temrezov, in Moscow. Temrezov reported that the republic reduced its dependence on the Russian federal budget in 2015, and that tax collection rates and the republican economy overall were better last year... MORE

Since an uprising unseated the pro-Russian regime of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014, relations between Kyiv and Moscow have gone from bad to worse. Responding to a recent ban of Ukrainian imports and seeking a way to reach post-Soviet Central Asian states and... MORE

Moscow’s military operations in Ukraine and Syria expose a fundamental distinction in approach: trying to extract itself from the former while showing no sign of applying that strategy to the latter. Officially, an “all is well” message is promulgated by the Russian political-military leadership concerning... MORE

Given Moscow’s desire to get out from under the sanctions regime and the almost equal desire of some Western governments to declare victory and lift it, the Kremlin appears likely to do just enough to claim that it has fulfilled the Minsk Accords and the... MORE

On January 20, the official website of Kazakhstan’s presidency published Nursultan Nazarbayev’s address to the nation in which he announced snap parliamentary elections. Earlier, on January 13, the lower chamber of parliament, the Mazhilis, had made public a collective appeal to the head of state... MORE

With Russia’s financial situation becoming more precarious, the country’s regions are likely to gain more power, according to the Russian economist Denis Sokolov. “If the year 2015 was the year of the zachistka (mop-up operation) against the regional elites, the year 2016 will become the... MORE