Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania will each contribute a troop squad to the American-led Operation Enduring Freedom underway in Central Asia and Afghanistan. Composed of professional soldiers, these squads will serve together with a Danish unit and are to be based at the military station Manas... MORE

The festering problems in Russian-controlled Abkhazia have become a troublesome factor in Georgia's internal politics, undermining the position of President Eduard Shevardnadze, and bringing to the fore certain aggrieved or adventure-prone elements in Georgian society. This is an unintended, but perhaps predictable result of Western... MORE

All Ukrainian ministers running in the parliamentary (Verkhovna Rada) elections will enjoy a respite from their work in the cabinet until election day, like it or not. On January 22, President Leonid Kuchma, himself fresh from a long Christmas vacation in the mountains, announced his... MORE

The case of Grigory Pasko, the muckraking Russian military journalist who was unexpectedly sentenced to four years in prison on treason charges this past December, has continued to generate controversy in Russia, and could be emerging as a minor political headache for President Vladimir Putin.... MORE

Russian politicians, public figures and media have been reacting to this week's shutdown of TV-6, and most of the commentary has been negative. Among the pithiest comments came from Vladimir Lukin, the former Russian ambassador to the United States who is now a deputy State... MORE

Akhmed Aliev, deputy chairman of the administration of Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, was murdered together with his wife on January 22. The crime took place in their home in the Dagestani capital (Russian agencies, January 22). It came just a few days after a... MORE

On January 21 in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed to his visiting Turkmen counterpart Saparmurat Niazov an alliance of "Eurasian" natural gas exporting countries under Russian control. The plan envisages using Gazprom's pipeline system for the export of Central Asian gas to Europe via... MORE

President Vladimir Putin's promises to "civilianize" and reform the armed forces notwithstanding, the process by which Russia's defense budget is formulated has remained highly secretive. But if the figures now being circulated in the press are a reliable indication of the government's intentions, then it... MORE

The authorities of Transdniester at last seem to be concentrating the minds of Russia's Defense Ministry, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the European Union by challenging them all simultaneously. In one way or another, the interests or prestige of these... MORE

Agricultural output boomed in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia last year, contributing to strong economic growth in all three Caucasus countries. In Georgia, the recovery of agriculture is one of the primary reasons for the country's 4.8 percent year-on-year GDP growth registered for the first three... MORE