On March 18, 2014, the Legislative Chamber (lower house) of the parliament of Uzbekistan adopted a law introducing amendments to the Constitution of Uzbekistan. Out of six articles to be amended (Articles 32, 78, 93, 98, 103, 117), the major change that will come as... MORE

Over three days, 11 people were killed in special operations in Dagestan. Ten of them were identified as members of the armed resistance, while the eleventh casualty was a member of the security forces. Two other servicemen were injured (https://dagestan.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/240005/).On March 23, militants attacked a... MORE

Ukraine shows that Russia’s threat assessments are cynical, mendacious, inclined toward worst-case scenarios, self-aggrandizing and self-reinforcing. They betray not just an incipient trend toward paranoia, but also hysteria about foreign threats and a tendency toward grandiosity. Recent developments in Russia’s Arctic policy show that this... MORE

On March 25, Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev completed his three-day visit to the Netherlands, where he met with the Dutch authorities and attended the World Nuclear Summit in The Hague. While nuclear issues took center stage at this international gathering of heads of state and... MORE

The leadership of Ingushetia is being forced to follow the orders of Kremlin strategists, which define how the situation will evolve in this, the smallest republic in the Russian Federation. Arguably, the most important problem for Moscow in Ingushetia is the armed underground jamaat in... MORE

President Vladimir Putin’s approval rating has reached a staggering 82.3 percent, the Kremlin-controlled pollster VTsIOM reported this week (March 27). Last January, the same polling outfit reported Putin’s rating at 60.6 percent. The almost bloodless capture and swift annexation of Crimea has been boosting Putin’s... MORE

During a March 8 meeting in Moscow with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Tajikistani Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Aslov drew comparisons between the EuroMaidan protests and Tajikistan’s bloody civil war (Ozodagon, March 8). The comments closely mirrored those given four days earlier by Igor Lyakin-Frolov, Russia’s... MORE

Belarus’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs may have set a record for evasiveness while formulating its March 19 statement vis-à-vis the crisis in Ukraine. “Belarus cannot be indifferent to the events in Ukraine, including the referendum held on March 16, 2014, in the Crimea, and the... MORE

Shortly after the swift proclamation of Crimea’s short-lived independence, Ramzan Kadyrov announced that Chechnya would invest in Crimea and build close ties with it. However, Kadyrov’s notorious reputation is more likely to repel the residents of Crimea than win them over. On March 16, as... MORE

Following the Russian Anschluss of Crimea, most Ukrainian, Russian and Western commentary has focused on the possibility that Moscow will use a similar strategy to move into the predominantly ethnic-Russian areas of eastern Ukraine. That is still an all too real possibility— especially if, after... MORE