In the pre-dawn hours on February 27 in Simferopol, some 50 heavily armed Russian men in camouflage uniforms without identification marks seized the parliament and government buildings of the Crimean Autonomous Republic, which forms a part of Ukraine. That squad is presumed to be Russian... MORE

As the eyes of the world were riveted to the unfolding crisis in Ukraine, where weeks of violent street protests recently brought down the corrupt regime of former president Viktor Yanukovych, Russian-Kazakhstani relations have endured another test. On February 20, the founder and former leader... MORE

A flurry of publications and public statements comparing and contrasting Belarus and Ukraine (see EDM, February 18) continues. On February 23, Belarus celebrated the Day of the Homeland’s Defender, a national holiday inherited from the Soviet Union. In his holiday speech, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka stated... MORE

An unexpected breakthrough emerged in the stalled investigations of several mysterious international murders of Chechens with ties to the Caucasus Emirate in 2008–2012. The news concerns a person who simultaneously worked for the security services of several countries—Russia, Georgia and Turkey.  A kind of James... MORE

The sudden meltdown of President Viktor Yanukovych’s regime in Kyiv last week has surprised the Kremlin. On Wednesday February 19, during the height of the bloodbath in Kyiv, when dozens of people were shot dead and hundreds wounded, the Kremlin-financed news website Vzglad was calling... MORE

In 1995, Turkmenistan proclaimed a policy of international diplomatic neutrality, and on December 12 of that year, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted the Resolution on the Permanent Neutrality of Turkmenistan, with 25 countries co-sponsoring the resolution (United Nations General Assembly, January 11, 1996).Despite... MORE

A large rally of Terek Cossacks took place in the city of Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia, on February 16. The Cossack organizations stated they would join forces with other ethnic-Russian organizations to thwart the draining of the ethnic-Russian population from the North Caucasus (https://www.apn.ru/publications/article31077.htm). “Gathering the... MORE

On February 25, Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada (national parliament) chairman and acting head of state, Oleksandr Turchynov, appointed Oleh Makhnitsky as acting general prosecutor, with instructions to “rebuff separatist tendencies” in parts of south-eastern Ukraine and Crimea. According to Turchynov as he introduced the appointment, separatists... MORE

Ukraine has embarked on regime transition. The interim leadership now confronts an entirely new mix of challenges to national and civil security, of greater complexity and intensity than anything in the country’s experience since 1991. Thousands of participants in the recent protest movement are still... MORE

Vladislav Surkov, the Kremlin’s overseer of the breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and a man who recently discussed building a bridge between Russia and Crimea that could serve as the basis for a possible move by Moscow against that part of Ukraine, recently... MORE