The notorious spring season in Kyrgyzstan was again marked by intensified protest activity this year. On May 31, protesters demanding the nationalization of the locally-based Kumtor gold mine clashed with security forces in a northern district of Jeti-Oguz of the Issyk-Kul province in what was... MORE

Against the background of the unfolding situation around the Chechen brothers accused of carrying out the Boston Marathon terrorist bombings, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and the killing in Florida of another Chechen connected to the brothers, Ibragim Todashev, the killing of a Chechen in Turkey... MORE

After several days of media speculation fueled by news leaks, Moscow City Mayor Sergei Sobyanin (54) announced he is resigning to seek reelection in a snap ballot on September 8, which under current Russian legislation is the only day in 2013 on which any regional... MORE

On May 29, the presidents of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine met in Astana to participate in a scheduled meeting of the Supreme Economic Council of the Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEC), established in 2001. Since Moscow, Minsk and Astana have lately been engaged in... MORE

Following a week of protests over his offensive and defamatory statements about the May 18, 1944 deportation of Crimean Tatars, Vladimir Andreev, the Russian consul general in Simferopol, Crimea, Ukraine, resigned from his post on May 25, 2013. These events were provoked by Andreev’s response... MORE

Ethnic Shapsugs who live in the Krasnodar region around Sochi are trying to make use of the upcoming Olympic Games to improve their position in their homeland. Aisa Achmezov, a businessman and a Circassian activist, told the Kavkazskaya Politika website that the Shapsug village of... MORE

Sixty-eight years ago this week, the Western allies forcibly returned to the Soviet Union more than 2,000 Cossacks who fought on the German side against Stalin during World War II. Some were executed and even more died in Soviet uranium mines. But Cossacks continue to... MORE

Pressed by international creditors and its own insolvency, Greece is selling off DEPA/DESFA, the state-controlled natural gas company. While Russian Gazprom looks set to acquire DEPA (Public Gas Corporation, the gas procurement and dominant distribution company), the little-known Russian company Sintez is bidding for DESFA... MORE

The Moscow European Security Conference on May 23–24 offered an opportunity for a wide range of defense officials and experts from member countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to exchange views on the future of Euro-Atlantic security with their Russian counterparts. Russia’s leading... MORE

For the past several days, Georgian politicians and experts have extensively discussed the alarming development of the situation around the village of Ditsi (https://en.ria.ru/world/20130527/181373355.html), located at the border between Georgia and South Ossetia. The government in Tbilisi considers this boundary “administrative” and is invariably sensitive... MORE