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

In view of the most recent escalation of the military conflict in its eastern regions, Ukraine has launched a nation-wide mobilization campaign meant to boost the number of the country’s military personnel by 100,000 to a total of 250,000. To be deployed in three waves,... MORE

Ramzan Kadyrov has warned that Chechen forces may be deployed in other regions of Russia to fight terrorism and extremism. “If there are such indications [of terrorism and extremism] in Moscow or other regions of the country, we will be at the forefront to fight... MORE

On January 27, Russian President Vladimir Putin held a meeting of the Commission for Military Technology Cooperation with Foreign States. Putin opened his remarks by stating that he wanted “to begin with a look back at the work done last year” and then told attendees,... MORE

The week of February 2 registered an explosion in political intrigue around the war in eastern Ukraine, and some sort of pause in hostilities is likely to ensue. Undoubtedly, this is a positive development, but it would be an overstatement to describe the late-night talks... MORE

Perhaps in no other modern-day country, with the exception of Israel, have Jews historically made up a larger percentage of the overall population as in Belarus. For example, in 1897, Jews comprised 14.2 percent of the residents of Belarusian territory; and in Grodno and Minsk... MORE

With most of the military forces of the United States and the North Atlantic Organization (NATO) having departed Afghanistan, Russia has grown increasingly anxious about a possible deterioration of the regional security situation. As 2014 ended, Moscow flatly called NATO’s Afghanistan policy a failure (Pajhwok... MORE