Tajikistan has agreed to cede a fraction of its territory to neighboring China in a bid to settle a border dispute that dates back more than a century. On January 12, the lower house of the Tajik parliament voted to ratify the 2002 border demarcation... MORE

On January 21, the first meeting of the Russian governmental commission on socio-economic development of the North Caucasus took place in Moscow. The chair of the commission, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin stated that the government and major Russian companies would invest significant resources into the... MORE

The privilege of addressing the opening session of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos is valued highly by the Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, who interprets this as international recognition of the business correctness of his “modernization” course. Following today’s bombing of Domodedovo airport in... MORE

Insurgency-related violence continued in the North Caucasus this past week, particularly in Dagestan. A homemade bomb went off near a department store in the city of Khasavyurt around one in the morning. No one was injured but the store was significantly damaged. That same day... MORE

Summing up the situation unfolding in Chechnya over the past year, it is worth noting that diametrically opposite processes took place in that part of the North Caucasus. Anyone who had a chance to visit Chechnya in the last year seems to be excited about... MORE

The Russian Navy plans to increase its presence on Ukrainian territory by adding urban infrastructure and civilian manpower to its naval assets in Sevastopol. The command of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet intends to build a housing estate (“mikrorayon”) for 20,000 personnel of the fleet, their... MORE

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) summit in Astana in early December 2010, was a symbolic showcase for the year-long failed negotiations on Karabakh. Azerbaijan’s President, Ilham Aliyev, and his Armenian counterpart, Serzh Sargsyan, did not even meet on the sidelines of... MORE

On January 14-15, European Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso, and EU Energy Commissioner, Guenther Oettinger, paid an unprecedented joint visit to Turkmenistan. They arrived directly from Azerbaijan, whose President Ilham Aliyev approved that country’s accession to the EU-planned Southern Gas Corridor on January 13 (EDM,... MORE

Russian military reform, initiated in the fall of 2008 after the short war with Georgia in August of the same year, has reached a critical junction: the old military machine has been dismantled, while a new one is struggling to emerge. Today, Russia is in... MORE

After several years of silence on the issue, Armenia has officially confirmed the existence of the sophisticated Russian-supplied S-300 air defense system in its military arsenal and demonstrated this by broadcasting video evidence. The authorities in Yerevan have also approved a five-year plan to modernize... MORE