On July 15, a meeting between Dagestan’s Vice Prime Minister, Rizvan Kurbanov, and the relatives of a detained bus driver prevented a possible regional scandal –the blockade of the highway connecting Russia and Azerbaijan. Relatives of Usman Garisov, who was arrested on drug possession and... MORE

To hinder Iran’s uranium-enrichment program, the US has introduced sanctions that bar deliveries of gasoline and other refined oil products to Iran. The European Union is following the US lead in this case. Russia’s initial response is calculated to suggest that it does not consider... MORE

Turkey’s prospective participation in a six-day NATO exercise in Armenia in September, and the informal Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) meeting in Astana, reignited the debate on the stalled Turkish-Armenian normalization process. The Armenia 2010 exercise will focus on post-earthquake civil emergency... MORE

Viktor Ozerov, the Chairman of the Defense Committee of the Russian Federation Council, suggested during the recent operational-strategic exercise, Vostok 2010, that the key task is to provide the armed forces with “advanced weapons and military hardware.” Ozerov claimed that the first stage in Defense... MORE

On July 14 in Moscow, Russian Energy Minister, Sergei Shmatko, and Iran’s Oil Minister, Masoud Mirkazemi, announced ambitious plans for bilateral cooperation, short-term and long-term. If implemented, these would circumvent two sets of sanctions imposed (outside the UN Security Council) by the United States and... MORE

Belarus and Ukraine are the only two post-communist countries where the ruling authorities see the nationalism of their countrymen as something to be denounced and combated. Viktor Yanukovych, is the first of four Ukrainian presidents whose team regard Ukrainian nationalism as an evil that they... MORE

On July 15, Moskovsky Komsomolets published a revealing report about a bitter conflict between the Russian interior ministry troops stationed in Chechnya and the Chechen Sever (“North”) battalion. Russian interior ministry sources told the newspaper that on February 4, 2010 during an operation against a... MORE

What made the annual Russian-German summit, held in Yekaterinburg last week, an event loaded with “innovative” symbolism, was President, Dmitry Medvedev’s, attempt to set Russia’s foreign policy on a new Western-friendly course. He formulated a rather untraditional set of goals at the meeting with top... MORE

Amid the ongoing instability in southern Kyrgyzstan, and the possibility of renewed violence as the October 10 parliamentary elections approach, the country’s hydro-energy sector shows signs of gradual recovery. The interim government might be able to supply electricity throughout the upcoming cold season and avoid... MORE