As the Newsru.com website wrote today (September 23), the situation in Dagestan, where insurgents have sharply increased the number of attacks, “is beginning to spin out of control and increasingly looks like a real guerrilla war.” In the suburbs of the capital Makhachkala today, the... MORE

As anticipated (see EDM, July 27, 28), Latvia’s parliamentary elections held on September 17 have brought the country to a potentially fateful crossroads. The choice is between consolidating Latvia’s national statehood as part of the West, or empowering the leftist Russian party to undermine those... MORE

In early September, Moscow persuaded Dushanbe to extend the agreement on hosting its military base by 49 years. The official agreement between Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his Tajik counterpart Emomali Rakhmon will be signed in early 2012 (www.vesti.ru, September 2). In exchange for the... MORE

The first reports of the killing of three Chechens after Friday prayers in Istanbul on September 16, indicated the incident may have been linked to the Caucasus Emirate (www.interfax.ru, September 16, 2011). Russian media tried to present the murders as being related to fighting with... MORE

This week, Russia’s long serving Transport Minister Igor Levitin was called to answer angry questions in the Duma after a series of tragic plane crashes and a riverboat sinking last July left hundreds of passengers and crew members dead. On September 7, a Yak-42 jet... MORE

The last several months have been full of good news for the national oil company of Azerbaijan. As the country prepares to celebrate the anniversary of the “Contract of the Century” (the main oil contract signed in 1994 between Azerbaijan and a consortium of western... MORE

On September 16, the French state bank Caisse des Depots et Consignations and Russian state company Resorts of the North Caucasus signed an agreement on setting up a joint venture. The French bank promised to raise 10 billion Euros ($14.2 billion) within a year for... MORE

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has been the chief proponent of Arctic development among the Russian elite, and he continues to be its booster. Putin promotes the creation of infrastructure so that Russia can exploit the Arctic’s energy resources as he emphasizes the need to... MORE

On September 16 in Sochi, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin presided over the signing of a shareholders’ agreement to build the offshore section of the South Stream gas pipeline (Interfax, September 16, 17).The agreement pertains to the pipeline’s section on the seabed of the Black... MORE

Turkey has signed a memorandum with the United States on the deployment of a US radar station in the country, which will form part of the missile defense shield project to boost the protection of NATO members against potential missile threats from the East. Earlier... MORE