On May 21, Russia’s freshly re-minted President Vladimir Putin signed a decree to reform the cabinet. The government now includes the newly-created Ministry for the Development of the Russian Far East, which will coordinate the implementation of regional development programs and manage state-owned assets, except... MORE

Kazakhstan and the other Central Asian countries played important roles at last week’s NATO summit in Chicago thanks to the session’s emphasis on Afghanistan and partnerships. Nonetheless, the Central Asian delegations joined others in expressing unease about NATO’s support for Eurasian security after NATO ends... MORE

Today (May 31), Russia’s President Vladimir Putin made the first foreign trip of his new term in office. The visit was to neighboring Belarus to hold talks with his Belarusian counterpart, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, in Minsk. Putin’s choice of Belarus was something of a surprise as... MORE

NATO’s Open Door Policy is as old as the Alliance itself, and remains to date a core principle of the Alliance. Under NATO’s founding treaty, the “Allies may, by unanimous agreement, invite any other European state in a position to further the principles of this... MORE

The last few days in May have been tense in Chechnya, including inside the pro-Moscow government of Chechnya, with Ramzan Kadyrov sacking the republican government. Odes Baisultanov, Kadyrov’s cousin, had presided over the government since 2007 (https://ria.ru/politics/20120521/654518251.html). The former minister of agriculture, Abubakar Edelgeriev, replaced... MORE

US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul – former director for Russia and Eurasia on the US National Security Council, considered the architect of President Barack Obama’s “reset policy” of improved US-Russian relations – arrived in Moscow last January and almost immediately got into trouble. A... MORE

“It is not important for China as to who will be building this railway line. The most important thing is that it is built,” Chinese Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan Wang Kaiwen said recently about the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway project, which Bishkek and Beijing seek to implement despite... MORE

On May 21, over 50 people from Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachaevo-Cherkessia and Adygea chose to commemorate the anniversary of the Russian-Circassian war in the 19th century in Georgia. “In practice the issue of the Russian-Caucasian war’s results should be discussed in Russia, by Russian scholars,” the head... MORE

An apparently random movement of a Russian Special Forces battalion located in the Central Military District (MD) may be an indication that the General Staff is increasingly concerned about future security in Central Asia. Moreover, it may be an additional sign of the persistent experimentation... MORE

Ukraine’s united opposition, Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchina (Fatherland) party and Arseniy Yatseniuk’s Front Zmin (Front for Change), held a congress on May 12 on the symbolic St. Sophia’s Cathedral Square in Kyiv. The congress released a detailed program for the upcoming October parliamentary elections.Boxing champion Vitaliy... MORE