In the course of 2011, the North Caucasus remained Russia’s most unsettled region but what is likely to prove more significant, it became a problem not only for Moscow, which clearly lacks any effective strategy for pacifying it, but also in Moscow, where an increasing... MORE

In the holiday pause, it has become even more apparent that the revitalized Russian politics has acquired a new and rather untraditional character. Nobody is remotely interested in where President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin are skiing or attending church services, and their... MORE

Prominent Tajik religious and political figure, Hoji Akbar Turajonzoda, and his brothers, Nuriddin and Muhammadjon, have, in recent weeks, come under increasing pressure from the authorities. On December 6, 2011, the Council of Ulamo (CoU), a government-controlled body regulating Islamic activities in the country, accused... MORE

The EU’s refusal to initial the Association Agreement (which includes a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement) at the December 19, 2011, EU-Ukraine summit in Kyiv was a geopolitical setback. Initialing is a technical stage meaning that the negotiations are completed. The second stage is... MORE

The end of 2011 saw another visit by Vladimir Putin to Chechnya. Putin’s first visit to Chechnya took place on December 31, 1999, while he was still serving as prime minister under President Boris Yeltsin. (Putin visited neighboring Dagestan several months earlier -- in August... MORE

Timing, route, and parameters make Azerbaijan’s Trans-Anatolia Gas Pipeline a game-changing project. Planned to run from the Georgian-Turkish to the Turkish-Bulgarian border, with a capacity of 16 bcm annually, and scalable to 24 bcm, the line would cost $5 billion to $6 billion to build... MORE

Calm has been restored in the oil-rich western part of Kazakhstan after clashes between police and protesters on December 16-17 that left at least 16 people dead and more than 100 injured, including striking oil workers. But Kazakhstan’s cultivated image as a bastion of stability... MORE

Energy Ministers, Natig Aliyev of Azerbaijan and Taner Yildiz of Turkey, signed on December 26 in Ankara a memorandum of understanding to build a Trans-Anatolia Gas Pipeline to Europe, dedicated mainly to Azerbaijani gas (“Direct Road to Europe: Azerbaijan’s Trans-Anatolia Gas Pipeline Project,” EDM, January... MORE

On January 2, a court in Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia penalized two people who had participated in a public protest, sentencing them to five and ten days of detention. On January 1, the well-known North Ossetian journalist Elina Marzoeva and the rights activist Ruslan Magkaev were... MORE

A massive pro-democracy movement has emerged in Russia, bringing together all shades of political opposition from leftist Marxists to pro-Nazi nationalists. Still, the backbone of the protest rallies on December 10 on Bolotnaya Square (60,000 protesters) and the larger rally on December 24 on Sakharov... MORE