Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande have jointly prevailed on Ukraine to sign another armistice with Russia’s proxy forces operating in Ukraine’s east (Kremlin.ru, Osce.org, February 12; see EDM, February 12). Signed on February 12, in Minsk, Belarus,... MORE

Renewed high-level negotiations on the war in Ukraine, with an agreement signed in Minsk, on Thursday, February 12, further raise the stature of Belarus in the eyes of the international community. Alongside the September 2014 ceasefire agreements previously also signed in the Belarusian capital, Belarus’s... MORE

Shortly after the governor of Ingushetia, Yunus-bek Yevkurov, said he intended to do away with everyone connected to the armed opposition in the republic (Kavkasia.net, December 30, 2014), it started to become apparent that his targets were not only regional militants. One of the targets... MORE

A marathon summit in Minsk of the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France—which lasted for more than 15 hours nonstop, from the evening of February 11 to late morning the following day—ended with a ceasefire agreement. The warring parties agreed to stop the bloody... MORE

Turkey has been steadily diversifying its energy transit policy and pursuing its goal of becoming a hub country for the rest of the region. In particular, Turkey reached an agreement with Russia on developing the Turkish Stream project (also known as “Turk Stream”—see EDM, December... MORE

Dagestani experts say the republic’s governor, Ramazan Abdulatipov, has managed to disrupt Dagestan’s existing bureaucratic structures but failed to build a better system of governance. Abdulatipov has succeeded in centralizing political power in his hands to some extent, but his tighter control of the government... MORE

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her French counterpart, Francois Hollande, have been leading intense diplomatic efforts to de-escalate the crisis Ukraine. Yet, as Russian media reported, the Merkel-Hollande summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 6, in Moscow, following their trip to meet President... MORE

Turkmenistan is perhaps the most opaque country of all the post-Soviet states, with the government exercising tight control over almost all information and publishing only those statistical figures that serve Ashgabat’s interests. That makes the results of a census conducted in December 2012 especially interesting... MORE

It has been a little over 100 days since Imangali Tasmagambetov’s appointment as the new defense minister of Kazakhstan last October. Born in the oil-rich Mangistau province, in the country’s west, the 58-year-old minister has had a particularly impressive career in politics. He first made... MORE

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow during the night of February 6–7. Merkel and Hollande had conferred with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Kyiv during the preceding night, eliciting his consent to a... MORE