President Nursultan Nazarbayev has suggested changing his country’s name from Kazakhstan to “Kazakh Yeli”—meaning the “Land of the Kazakhs”—during a visit to the nation’s oil capital Atyrau on February 6. By dropping the “stan” from Kazakhstan, the country would differentiate itself from its Central Asian... MORE

On February 5, President Nursultan Nazarbayev held his annual meeting with the foreign ambassadors and lead representatives of the local offices of major international organizations in Astana. More than 80 senior foreign diplomats accredited to Kazakhstan heard the president’s speech at the Akorda presidential residence... MORE

Following Russia’s peculiar behavior in regard to sharing information on Tamerlan Tsarnaev with the United States (https://polit.ru/news/2013/04/22/tamerlan/), Moscow decided to pursue the same policies toward Chechens living in Europe. The exact figure or number of Chechens residing in Europe is unknown. According to some unconfirmed... MORE

China is increasingly interested in railway construction in the former Soviet Central Asian states as a land alternative to maritime transit for shipping high-value, low-volume products such as electronics to European markets. If all goes according to plan, in May 2014 the final technical decisions... MORE

On February 5, Gazprom refloated the option of expanding the Nord Stream pipeline by adding a third and possibly a fourth line to the existing two. A third and a fourth line would reach beyond the Baltic Sea to countries on the North Sea. Gazprom... MORE

Georgia’s policy toward the North Caucasus has never been marked by continuity. It experienced ups and downs throughout the ages, according to historical evidence. The Chechens helped the Georgians against the Khazars in the distant past, and the first king of Georgia, Farnavaz, was married... MORE

Almost all of Russia seems to be glued to the television, watching the Sochi Winter Olympics where Team Russia—currently in seventh place in the overall medal count—is apparently failing to take much gold. But meanwhile, on February 13, President Vladimir Putin granted an audience at... MORE

Several days prior to the opening of the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, peculiar events started to take place at the Russian-Georgian border. According to multiple accounts, Georgian border guards unexpectedly stopped allowing some residents of the North Caucasus to cross at the Upper Lars... MORE

At the meeting of the Russian Ministry for Regional Development on February 4, Dagestan’s leader Ramazan Abdulatipov said the central government in Moscow should give the regions the right to administer regional resources if it cannot do it properly itself. Abdulatipov provided an example, noting... MORE

Russian natural gas exports to Germany grew to 40.2 billion cubic meters (bcm) in 2013, a hefty increase over the preceding year’s 33.2 bcm, according to Gazprom’s sales report for 2013 (Interfax, January 16, 2014).A growing share of that increasing volume enters Germany through the... MORE