The governments of transit countries in the Nabucco-West project—Austria, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria—have appealed to the European Union’s top executive authorities to support the selection of this pipeline route by the Shah Deniz gas producers in Azerbaijan.The producers’ consortium intends to select either the Nabucco-West... MORE

Moldova is again experiencing a vacancy of government. The tripartite Alliance for European Integration (AEI), under the Liberal-Democrat Prime Minister Vlad Filat, collapsed on March 5, abandoned by its other two parties. The Democratic Party, led by Parliament Chairman Marian Lupu officially and by business... MORE

Moldova’s wealthiest businessman, Vlad Plahotniuc, is expanding his influence over state institutions. The power struggle, pitting Plahotniuc along with his Democratic Party (officially led by Parliament Chairman Marian Lupu) against Prime Minister Vlad Filat’s Liberal-Democrat Party, has torn apart the governing Alliance for European Integration... MORE

Since the start of the second Chechen war in the fall of 1999, the Chechen armed resistance has evolved, with poorly educated people from the villages gradually replaced by young people with higher education. This is a kind of protest reaction by youth against the... MORE

For the eleventh time since 2000, President Vladimir Putin (60) ran a televised national question-and-answer (Q & A) session that lasted almost nonstop for five hours on April 25. Economic growth, which made Putin popular before, has slowed down almost to a stop. Meanwhile, the... MORE

In early April, Azerbaijan’s Deputy Foreign Minister Khalaf Khalafov told the local press that the legal status of the Caspian Sea was still being debated by the littoral states (Azerbaijan itself as well as Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Iran), which had already discussed the organization... MORE

On April 4, various Georgian news agencies, based on an article by the British newspaper The Guardian, reported that Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili was the owner in 2006–2009 of a secret offshore company, Bosherston Overseas Corp. (BOC), in the British Virgin Islands (www.geworld.ge, www.netgazeti.ge,... MORE

On April 18, against the backdrop of the ongoing territorial dispute between Chechnya and Ingushetia, about 300 law enforcement agents from the Chechen Republic entered the village of Arshty in Ingushetia’s Sunzha district. The incursion took the tensions between Ingushetia and Chechnya to a whole... MORE

The latest stream of news from Belarus has three refrains—modernization, integration into the Eurasian Economic Community (EEC), and reinvigoration of ties with the European Union. All three are contained in President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s annual report to the National Assembly delivered on April 19 (https://www.sb.by/post/146628/). Lukashenka... MORE

The launch of a Talysh-language radio station based in the Armenian-occupied territories but directed at the members of that ethnic minority elsewhere in Azerbaijan is part of the latest chapter in the long and dangerous history of efforts by Azerbaijan’s three neighbors—Armenia, Iran and the... MORE