The latest World Bank (WB)/International Finance Corporation (IFC) Doing Business 2013 (DB) report reveals remarkable progress achieved by Kazakhstan in creating a business-friendly environment: it ranks 49th out of 185 countries surveyed. Especially impressive is the country’s improvement in one of the key indicators—ease of... MORE

In a little-noticed development last month, a senior Armenian military official has announced Armenia’s willingness to use military force against Azeri economic facilities in the event of an outbreak of war in Karabakh. On October 15, Major General Artak Davtyan, Chief of the Operative Department,... MORE

On November 6, President Vladimir Putin sacked Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov (50), replacing him with Sergei Shoigu (57), who was appointed governor of the Moscow region last May after serving for more than 20 years as chief of Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry (Ministerstvo po Chrezvychaynym... MORE

On October 22, about 450 villagers threatened to destroy the offices of the Chinese company Zijin Mining Group in the village of Orlovka in northern Chui province in Kyrgyzstan. The attack occurred after a villager’s horse was killed by a staff member of the company.... MORE

On November 5, the Russian company ROSSPEN published the memoirs of former chairman of the Parliament Stanislau Shushkevich, the first leader of Belarus after independence. The book came out in a Russian-language edition because none of Belarus’s publishers dared to issue the original in Belarusian.... MORE

On October 23, a suspected suicide bomber destroyed a police checkpoint on the administrative border between Ingushetia and North Ossetia. One police officer died in the attack and several others were injured. The power of the bomb was estimated at 50 kilograms of TNT. The... MORE

The parliamentary election on October 28 disillusioned those who hoped for progress in Ukraine after the botched election to the regional and municipal councils in 2010. Like two years ago, radicals performed better than expected while the lack of a level playing field and the... MORE

Mintimir Shaimiyev, the former president of Tatarstan whose views both reflect and help power the ideas of other non-Russian leaders, has issued a sweeping indictment of the current central Russian government for continuing to be in thrall to “a nostalgia for imperial thinking,” for seeking... MORE

At the heart of the reform of Russia’s Armed Forces, launched in October 2008, was the aim to create “permanent readiness” brigades, principally to facilitate rapid deployment and enhance combat capability and combat readiness. It is now a source of furrowed brows among the country’s... MORE

On October 27, Tajikistan’s President Emomalii Rahmon formally inaugurated the Shahriston tunnel along the Dushanbe-Khujand highway (BBC Tajik, October 27). The 5,253-meter tunnel cuts the time required to drive between the capital of Dushanbe and Tajikistan’s second-largest city, Khujand (Leninabad), from eight to less than... MORE