Shell will extract unconventional gas in Ukraine according to an agreement signed with Ukraine last week. This will be Ukraine’s first big project with a large multinational company in the oil and gas sector, and Chevron is likely to follow suit later this year. With... MORE

On January 24, Council of Europe Secretary General Thorbjørn Jagland welcomed the Russian government’s decision to allow the publication of a report on the North Caucasus by the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT).... MORE

Discussions about Russia’s future at the World Economic Forum (WEF) are traditionally prompted by the interests of potential investors rather than ambitions of its leaders. And this year, investor attention toward Russia was awakened by the demonstrated infirmity of its political order. President Vladimir Putin... MORE

While Western financial blogs in 2012 decried the rise of Mongolian resource nationalism as well as continuing corruption in Mongolia’s mining sector, Australia, cautiously yet successfully, has maneuvered through the same environment to significantly increase its investment and political footprint. Mongolia’s superhot mining boom cooled... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. According to the data released in December 2012 by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kazakhstan’s stock of cumulative foreign investment abroad was around $20 billion at the end of 2011. The top five destinations for Kazakhstan’s Outward Foreign... MORE

The Russian Orthodox Church has reformed its organizational structures in the North Caucasus twice in the last few years alone. Thus, on March 22, 2011, Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia became part of the previously created Vladikavkaz and Makhachkala diocese (www.gazeta.ru/news/lenta/2011/03/22/n_1758529.shtml). Chechnya and Dagestan were thereby... MORE

Russia has repeatedly pledged to boost strategic security cooperation with China. In the past, both sides preferred only to make verbal statements on the matter. But now Moscow and Beijing appeared to pledge actual joint action in connection with issues of strategic security, including the... MORE

News agencies reported on January 10 that the European Union had earmarked 2.1 million euros ($2.8 million) for Kyrgyzstan to administer and rehabilitate the country’s former uranium-producing site in Min-Kush in central Naryn province as well as the uranium tailings (waste by-products of uranium mining)... MORE

The start of 2013 was marked by a rapid deterioration of the security situation in Dagestan. The course of events in Dagestan in 2012 showed that the republican authorities not only failed to establish control over the situation in the republic, but that signs of... MORE

Last Thursday, facing a deteriorating ethnic situation in his own krai, Stavropol Governor Valery Zerenkov said that it was time to end “the policy of minimizing” such developments or ignoring them altogether. The authorities must start to report “objectively” about them, and “on the basis... MORE