On September 22 in Moscow, participants in international negotiations on the Transnistria conflict announced their collective intention to re-launch official negotiations after a five-year breakdown. This means that Russia and Tiraspol authorities have finally stopped refusing to engage in negotiations, although they continue to set... MORE

On September 23, a delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) visited Ingushetia. The head of the PACE delegation, Nikolaos Dendias, called the refugees’ living conditions in the republic “unsatisfactory.” Dendias is a member of Pace’s committee on migration, refugees and... MORE

Recent articles in the Eurasia Daily Monitor (EDM) have extensively covered Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) exercises and its decision to work openly to frustrate any manifestation of Arab-Spring like symptoms in Central Asia, including monitoring and using counter-revolutionary actions against the use of the... MORE

All three of Latvia’s Western-oriented parties together won the September 17 parliamentary elections on the basis of a common set of values: commitment to NATO and the EU, market economics, and consolidation of the Latvian society in the Latvian state. As in any multiparty system,... MORE

Ukraine’s next parliamentary election will take place in 2012. During this period the Viktor Yanukovych administration will attempt a precarious balancing act to satisfy the West. At the same time, the administration will try to put in place a managed democracy to facilitate Yanukovych’s re-election... MORE

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