President Barack Obama said in his State of the Union message (delivered before Congress on January 20) that US economic sanctions have had a devastating impact on the Russian economy (Tvrain.ru, January 21). In reality, only certain parts of the economy of Russia have been... MORE

Foreign affairs ministers Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany, Sergei Lavrov of Russia, Pavlo Klimkin of Ukraine, and Laurent Fabius of France—representing the so-called “Normandy” group of countries—met in Berlin on January 21. Germany convened the meeting amid an upsurge in Russian-led attacks on Ukrainian positions along... MORE

Chechens who emigrated to Europe are not in an enviable situation today, as any terrorist threat around the world invariably prompts the security services to investigate them closely. France’s security services attempted to connect the January 7 terrorist attack in Paris on the satirical magazine... MORE

On January 14, 2015, Aleksei Miller, the CEO of Russia’s state-owned natural gas giant Gazprom, sent a letter of warning to European Commission Vice President for the Energy Union Maros Sefcovic. In his letter, Miller wrote that Russia intends to stop all shipments of gas... MORE

Russian regular and proxy forces have attacked Ukrainian positions at selected points along the entire length of the demarcation line in recent days. This operation threatens to shift the demarcation line and the whole existing basis of the September 2014 Minsk armistice. Russia has blocked... MORE

The foreign ministers of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France met this week in Berlin in the so-called “Normandy format” to seek ways to scale down the recent upsurge in military violence in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas (which encompasses the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces).... MORE

The United States’ muted profile in mineral-rich, landlocked Mongolia receded even more in 2014. Indeed, the US has largely stood by while Mongolia deliberately integrated its faltering economy closer with its two neighbors, China and Russia. Last year, top-level Mongolian officials met with Chinese President... MORE

The unrest and ongoing fighting in eastern Ukraine seriously impacts coal supplies and thermal power electricity generation in the rest of the country. On December 28, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko ordered the Ministry of Energy and Coal Industry to halt rolling power blackouts, adding that... MORE

In December 2014, Russian legislators quietly passed new legislation that allows Moscow to remove part of the region from under the control of that region’s government in order “to speed up socio-economic development” in the North Caucasus republics. As a Dagestani analyst Rasul Kadiev points... MORE

No one was more encouraged by Russia’s annexation of Crimea and military moves in Donbas (eastern Ukrainian region encompassing the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces) than the leaders of Transnistria. This breakaway Slavic-dominated region in northeastern Moldova viewed Moscow’s actions as opening the way to the... MORE