US Vice-President, Joseph Biden’s, landmark article (Biden Proposes New Tasks for the OSCE, EDM, May 14) also heralds new US proposals on conventional arms control in Europe. These would seek to improve military transparency through exchanges of military data and on-site visits. According to Biden,... MORE

The Obama administration is about to launch policy initiatives regarding Europe’s eastern neighborhood and conventional arms control in Europe. US Vice-President Joseph Biden has unveiled a number of ideas through the May 6 New York Times/International Herald Tribune article, “Advancing Europe’s Security,” under his byline.Biden’s... MORE

On May 9, several explosions and a suicide attack attempt took place in Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria and Chechnya (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, May 9). The situation could be called almost normal for the region, which has been plagued by violence in previous years, but with one slight difference. Following... MORE

Russia’s central partner in Latin America remains Venezuela and Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin’s, visit there underscores the scope of that partnership. Putin’s trip encompassed several large deals with Venezuela that reveal the true scope of this partnership, even if bilateral trade fell to $297 million... MORE

In Soviet times grandiose displays of military might during parades on Red Square in the center of Moscow were mostly designed to impress western Cold War adversaries. The last Soviet military parade was in November 1990. Russian society was engulfed in antimilitary sentiment caused by... MORE

The visit of the Turkmen President, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, to China on May 2 has once again reaffirmed the significance of China for Turkmenistan following the launch of the Turkmenistan-China gas pipeline that has broken the Russian monopoly on energy transit routes in Central Asia and... MORE

The Ukrainian government and opposition alike have reacted coolly to Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin’s, April 30 proposal to merge the two countries’ national gas companies, Naftohaz Ukrainy and Gazprom. The government apparently does not see many benefits from such a move and hesitates, afraid... MORE

There can be no doubting Moscow’s intention to play a larger role in Latin America. President, Dmitry Medvedev, has confirmed this and Russian diplomacy in the past three months has featured trips by Latin American leaders to Moscow as well as by Medvedev and Prime... MORE

On May 6, the official date for the next parliamentary elections was announced in Azerbaijan. According to the spokesman of the central election commission, Azer Sariyev, the next elections for the legislative body of the country will be held on November 7 (Trend News Agency,... MORE

Each spring from 2007 to date, Georgia’s radical opposition has linked its regime-change campaigns with a powerful patron, in the hope of counterbalancing the state authorities. Initially that patron was an internal one the tycoon, Badri Patarkatsishvili, whose resources rivaled those of the state until... MORE