Dagestan’s Interior Ministry reported today (December 9) that a cache of weapons was discovered in Karabudakhentsky district on the Caspian Sea coast. According to the ministry, police found a bag containing four F-1 hand grenades, five RGD-5 grenades, an RPG-18 grenade launcher, a GP-25 under-barrel... MORE

A total of eight political parties have registered for the upcoming parliamentary election in Kazakhstan on January 15, yet the outcome is already fairly clear. President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s party, Nur Otan, currently the only political party represented in parliament, is expected to win by a... MORE

The ruling United Russia (UR) lost votes in the December 4 Duma elections compared to the landslide in the previous national poll in December 2007, but official results still gave it a majority. After counting over 99.9 percent of the votes, the Central Election Commission... MORE

On November 27, at the second round of “presidential elections” in the Georgian breakaway territory of South Ossetia, the Kremlin candidate – minister for extreme situations, Anatoly Bibilov – suffered a crushing defeat to the opposition leader, Alla Jioeva. Bibilov scored 40 percent and Jioeva... MORE

US Vice President, Joe Biden, paid a working visit to Turkey, which provided an opportunity for a reality check of the current condition of US-Turkish bilateral relations. In addition to meeting with Turkish leaders, Biden attended the Global Entrepreneurship summit, which was developed as a... MORE

A number of events in 2011 reinforce allegations of systemic abuse and torture and even the occurrence of possible extrajudicial killings in detention by law enforcement agencies in Tajikistan. On October 20, police in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, took a badly injured Bahromiddin Shodiyev, 28,... MORE

The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) has detained a fire inspector for soliciting a $44,000 bribe from a company which was involved in the construction of a new stadium for the Euro-2012 soccer championship in Kyiv (www.ssu.gov.ua, November 24). Just two days later, State Employment Service... MORE

On December 4, parliamentary elections were held in Russia. Russian observers say that the manifestly exaggerated victory of the ruling United Russia party in the republics of the North Caucasus played a key role in enabling the ruling United Russia party to win over 50... MORE

“Issue ignored is a crisis invited,” Henry Kissinger once famously said writing on US foreign policy. This sums up the predicament in which the US may find itself if it fails to address the risks stemming from Pakistan’s decision to close NATO supply routes in... MORE

In the current election season the Russian media has speculated that the Defense Minister Anatoliy Serdyukov may be replaced, possibly by Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s Ambassador to NATO, which masks deeper anxiety about the future direction of the Armed Forces. The latest rumors also partly reflect... MORE