On September 29, the presidents of the Caspian littoral states—Russia, Kazakhstan, Iran, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan—attended the fourth Caspian Summit, held in Astrakhan (TASS, kremlin.ru, September 29). This year’s meeting of the heads of state once again produced no definitive five-way agreement to effectively delineate Caspian... MORE

Yazidis, an Iraqi minority, have started arriving as refugees in Europe, where they encounter people who are supposedly causing their problems back at home, including the Chechens. A conflict between such refugees and Chechens erupted in the small German town of Celle, which is close... MORE

Russia’s grand policy objective toward Ukraine can be defined, broadly, as doing away with Ukraine’s sovereign statehood. Toward that goal, Russia is resorting to military power (in a progression from hybrid to conventional), political-psychological warfare, economic pressures, and phased-in territorial fragmentation (Donbas partition, Novorossiya project,... MORE

Beyond the newly imposed partition lines, Russian regular and irregular forces are incessantly attacking Ukrainian positions in the Debaltseve salient, the Donetsk airport, and around Mariupil on the Azov Sea. Capturing these positions—a centrally located rail and road transport hub, the international airport, and the... MORE

Russia is using the ceasefire as an opportunity to cement and expand its military presence, directly as well as through the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” (DPR, LPR). Following the September 5 and September 19–20 armistice agreements, Russian regular and proxy forces have re-captured considerable... MORE

The ceasefire agreements, signed on September 5 and 19–20, have, in no sense, halted Russia’s multi-dimensional war against Ukraine. This includes a still-“hot” military conflict and a “cold” propaganda war. Nor could these agreements stop Russia from prosecuting the conflict in the absence of effective... MORE

Since Russia occupied Crimea with its strategically important naval port and the Russian military base in Sevastopol this past February (UNIAN, February 27), life there has become increasingly dangerous for those who do not share the political views of the Russian leadership. It was the... MORE

Next month (November 2014), it will be 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, which ended the Cold War. But a new cold war is apparently swiftly taking shape between the East and the West. Notably, the Ukrainian crisis continues to unfold into... MORE

Two years ago, in October 2012, Georgia experienced a peaceful, non-violent, constitutional change of power for the first time in the country’s modern history. The first president of the Republic of Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who was elected on May 26, 1991, was overthrown by armed... MORE

With the diplomatic standoff between Russia and the West over Ukraine still far from reaching a resolution, and as Moscow continues to support the separatist movements in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, the Russian economy keeps sliding into a recession. The International Monetary Fund... MORE