Representatives of Transdniester, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Karabakh conferred on December 15-16 in Moscow on "Conflicts in the Post-Soviet Space and the Unrecognized Republics." Russia's Institute for CIS Affairs, which is officially sponsored by the Foreign Affairs and Defense ministries and other government agencies, organized... MORE

A citizen of Russia and resident of Moscow of South Ossetian origin, Eduard Kokoyev, was inaugurated on December 18 as president of the unrecognized republic of South Ossetia, which has de facto seceded from Georgia. Kokoyev received 53 percent of the vote in a December... MORE

The U.S.-led war on terrorism in Afghanistan and ensuing realignments throughout the region, have turned Tajikistan from a strategic backwater into a strategic prize almost overnight. The twin factors of a Western stake and Western presence on the ground afford Tajikistan the chance to abandon... MORE

Last week saw publication of the final results in the elections of regional legislatures held on December 9 in six Russian regions--Murmansk, Perm and Samara Oblasts, Primorsky and Khabarovsk Krais and the Komi-Permyak Autonomous Okrug. It turned out that the main threat the candidates faced... MORE

On December 16, three Russian regions--the Republics of Gorny Altai, Komi and Chuvashia--held elections for their chief executives. According to preliminary results, Nikolai Federov won re-election in the Chuvash Republic, receiving 40.7 percent of the vote. (Chuvashia has a single-round system for its presidential elections,... MORE

Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko's electoral bloc for the upcoming parliamentary elections--Our Ukraine, which leads popularity polls neck and neck with the Communists--will consist of ten parties. This was announced on December 7, when the bloc's leaders publicized an agreement on the allocation of... MORE

On December 13, Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada (parliament) dismissed its first deputy speaker, Viktor Medvedchuk, in a vote of 234-50 with 112 abstentions. It was more than a simple ouster. It was in fact a major defeat for Ukraine's strongest oligarchic party--the United Social Democrats (USDP)--and... MORE

On December 14, the fourth congress of Ukraine's Party of Regions (UPR)--a key element in the presidential bloc For United Ukraine (FUU)--ruled to replace its leader. Deputy Prime Minister for Humanitarian Issues Volodymyr Semynozhenko took over as the UPR chairman from the chief of Ukraine's... MORE

As had been expected, Russian President Vladimir Putin responded in a restrained fashion to last week's announcement by the Bush administration that it intends to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Putin did characterize the U.S. move as a "mistake" and warned that it... MORE

On December 14-15, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld led a Pentagon delegation to Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia. As he headed for the region, Rumsfeld remarked that the post-September 11 situation offers opportunities for America to "reconnect with those countries" and "have military-to-military relations on a... MORE