On June 10, Kazakhstan and the World Trade Organization (WTO) announced they had reached an agreement for Kazakhstan’s accession to the trade body, bringing an end to an almost 20-year negotiation process that began when the Central Asian republic applied in January 1996 (Wto.org, June... MORE

In April, a sharia court decreed that a range of orders issued by Amir Salakhuddin Shishani (Feyzulla Margoshvili), the long-time leader of the Jaish al-Muhadjireen wal-Ansar (JMA), were in breach of sharia norms. JMA is an insurgent group fighting the Syrian regime made up mainly... MORE

In a surprising turn of events, on July 8, the Russian state-run natural gas monopoly Gazprom canceled a contract with the Italian oil and gas services group Saipem. The two companies were supposed to jointly build the first line of Turkish Stream, the Moscow-backed pipeline... MORE

On July 1, President Petro Poroshenko made public the draft amendments to Ukraine’s Constitution, regarding decentralization of the country’s administrative-territorial system (Kyiv Post, July 1). The amendments redefine the relationship between Ukraine’s central government and the administrative-territorial units on three levels (province, district, community), devolving... MORE

In the Russian-occupied Georgian region of Abkhazia, the last couple weeks of June 2015 were dominated by news of an unusual spat between the typically submissive Abkhazian separatists, on the one hand, and their Russian patrons, on the other. The disagreement between the two sides... MORE

The Caucasus Emirate (CE) is refusing to exit the political arena of the North Caucasus. After all the well-known amirs of the North Caucasus jamaats pledged allegiance to the Islamic State’s (IS) so-called caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (see EDM, June 26), one would have expected... MORE

The “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk (“DPR, LPR”) have announced their intentions to stage local elections, outside Ukraine’s constitutional and legal framework, on their respective territories. This move continues the hollowing out of the September 2014 Minsk agreement by decisions of Moscow, Donetsk and... MORE

A law banning foreign and international non-governmental organizations (NGO) as “undesirable” in Russia was approved by both houses of parliament and signed by President Vladimir Putin last May. A specific list of “undesirables” is currently being prepared in Moscow, and it may include The Jamestown... MORE

The Belarusian parliament endorsed a new date for the upcoming presidential elections: October 11. It is unlikely that shifting elections from November (as originally planned) to October will make a difference either in terms of negative trends in the economy or in terms of the... MORE

On June 22, the vice president of the International Circassian Association (ICA), Adam Bogus, announced that he was suspending his membership in the organization until its next leadership elections. Bogus, who is from Adygea, also refused to take part in an ICA conference that was... MORE