On September 15 in Murmansk, the Russian and Norwegian foreign affairs ministers, Sergei Lavrov and Jonas Gahr Store, signed a bilateral treaty on delimitation of maritime jurisdictions and cooperation in the Barents Sea and the Arctic Ocean. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Jens... MORE

London-based Chechen rebel envoy Akhmed Zakaev was arrested today (September 17) in Poland, where he had traveled to attend the World Congress of the Chechen People taking place in Warsaw on September 16-18. A Polish police spokesman told Reuters that Zakaev, who was granted political... MORE

Just four days after the September 5 suicide bombing in Buinaksk, Dagestan, reportedly carried out by Zamir Terekbaev, a 26-year-old resident of the village of Andrei-Kurgan in the Neftekumsky district of Russia’s Stavropol region, originally from Dagestan, a powerful blast rocked Vladikavkaz, the capital of... MORE

Fundamental differences have emerged in talks on a joint venture between Russia’s Gazprom and the Naftohaz Ukrainy national oil and gas company. Not only do Kyiv and Moscow differ on which assets the joint venture should be based on and on the gas price issue,... MORE

“CORF [Collective Operational Reaction forces] will be no worse than NATO,” claimed Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, only one year ago. Today, these words are used in Russia to popularize the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the CORF within the post-Soviet space. They are also... MORE

On September 13, Russian Defense Minister, Anatoliy Serdyukov, and his Kyrgyz counterpart, Abibilla Kudayberdiyev, discussed the possibility of opening a Russian military training center in the southern city of Osh. The proposal comes almost one year after Washington and Bishkek began discussing the possibility of... MORE

As the Kyrgyz parliamentary campaign officially began on September 10, concerns mounted that major political parties will choose to use forceful methods to prevail over their competitors. Tensions are rising especially among parties that aspire to a majority in parliament and those that might fail... MORE

On September 11, a police armored truck and a gas pipeline were blown up in the Elbrus district, located in the mountainous part of Kabardino-Balkaria. The attack left five servicemen injured and several settlements without gas supplies (ITAR-TASS, September 11). The strength of the blast... MORE

During a meeting on September 13-14 in Baku, Presidents Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia, and Traian Basescu of Romania, as well as Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, announced the launching of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) project. Designated as the Azerbaijan-Georgia-Romania... MORE

As Moscow’s mayor since 1992, one of founders of the ruling United Russia party and one of its collective co-leaders, Yuri Luzhkov, 73, has become the target of furious public attacks by the state-controlled Russian TV channels. In a broadside that began last week on... MORE