A high-profile crime against the official Islamic hierarchy of the republic of Tatarstan took place in this relatively quiet Russian region on July 19, when the chief of the instructional division of the Spiritual Board of Muslims of Tatarstan, Valiulla-khazrat Yakupov, was gunned down at... MORE

This month, the government agency that oversees Russia’s arms exports and imports – the Federal Service on Military-Technical Cooperation (Federalnaya Sluzhba Voyenno-Tecknicheskogo Sotrudnichestva or FSVTS) – confirmed that Iran is suing Russia for damages to the tune of some $4 billion in the Court of... MORE

On July 3, 2012, the leader of a Salafist group in Kostanay, northern Kazakhstan, was convicted of recruiting Kazakhstani citizens and providing them with fraudulent documents to help them travel to the Afghanistan-Pakistan region and join the insurgency (Interfax [Kostanay], July 3). While the Salafist... MORE

The 62nd meeting of the CIS Council of Defense Ministers in Kaliningrad on July 5 discussed deepening security cooperation on a broad range of issues within the former Soviet space, with special attention to developing integrated air defense architecture – long discussed by the CIS... MORE

In late June, President of Belarus Alyaksandr Lukashenka visited Cuba, Venezuela and Ecuador. He signed over 20 accords with the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, renewed acquaintances with Raul Castro in Cuba and started a new relationship with Rafael Correa, the President of Ecuador. The... MORE

On July 21, a massive clash between ethnic Russians and Caucasians took place in the central part of the Russian city of Kislovodsk, in Stavropol region of the Northern Caucasus Federal District. Participants in the incident reportedly used knives and guns, and two people died... MORE

On June 13, 2012, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) obligated Russia to pay 60,000 euros ($73,680) to relatives of Ramzan Umarov, who was kidnapped by police on April 2007 in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan. The Dagestan Public Prosecutor’s office had opened a... MORE

Russia’s Armed Forces, facing continued and long term convulsions due to inadequately planned and poorly executed defense reform, has further complicated the process by developing and introducing the Aerospace Defense Forces (Vozdushno Kosmicheskaya Oborona – VKO), which faces multiple technical and organizational challenges. On August... MORE

The Georgian Dream opposition coalition, and its dominant party of the same name, has presented almost all of its candidates for single-mandate districts in Georgia’s upcoming parliamentary elections. The name “Georgian Dream” applies both to Bidzina Ivanishvili’s party and to the coalition that the Georgian... MORE

Bidzina Ivanishvili, multi-billionaire leader of the Georgian Dream opposition party and coalition, has almost completed the nomination of candidates for the upcoming parliamentary elections in single-mandate electoral districts. Most of these candidates are non-political individuals (veteran cultural figures and sportsmen, some employees of Ivanishvili’s organizations)... MORE