On October 17, Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili declared that the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) coalition’s presidential candidate, Giorgi Margvelashvili, would be well advised not to participate in a second round of the upcoming presidential election should he fail to garner over 50 percent of... MORE

On October 13, massive riots started in the Moscow district of Biryulyovo, which is located in the southern part of the city (see EDM, October 17). Many observers dubbed the events a traditional Russian pogrom against ethnic non-Russians. The participants of the riots stormed a... MORE

The dramatic resolution of the fiscal-political crisis in the United States was barely noticed in Moscow last week (October 16–17) as two dissimilar events of a local character but heavy resonance focused public attention. The first one was a mass riot in the Moscow suburb... MORE

On October 15, the trial of the former military emir of the Caucasus Emirate and emir of the Ingush jamaat, Magas (a.k.a. Ali Taziev, Magomed Yevloev) concluded. Magas was the emir of Ingushetia from 2001 to 2010 and the military emir of the entire North... MORE

On October 11, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka gave his 11th press conference to Russian journalists. It lasted 5.5 hours. The audience consisted of about 90 people, mostly representing Russian provincial media. During three days preceding the press conference, the members of the audience were given... MORE

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Leonid Kozhara has visited Kazakhstan and Prime Minister Mykola Azarov went to Belarus earlier this month to assure Russia’s Customs Union partners that Ukraine’s plans to sign an association and free trade agreement with the European Union in November will do them... MORE

Suspending the construction of large infrastructure projects is one of the primary accusations that President Mikheil Saakashvili and his team make against the government of Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili in the run up to the presidential elections scheduled for October 27. These projects would arguably... MORE

Two years ago, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s assassination by Western-backed rebels (October 20, 2011) marked the end of all-out civil war and the collapse of the state in Libya. The United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) based their case for military intervention on... MORE

In a search for solutions to the problem of the North Caucasus, the Russian government is returning to the practices of Russia’s Tsarist rulers. It is unclear who in the Kremlin is advocating and directing this approach, claiming that things were better under the tsars,... MORE

The fatal stabbing of an ethnic Russian, Yegor Shcherbakov, 25, in front of his girlfriend on October 10, allegedly by an Azerbaijani citizen living in Moscow, Orkhan Seynalov, 31, has led to mass rioting in the southern Moscow working-class suburb of Biryulyovo on October 13.... MORE