Kyrgyzstan's latest effort to increase heretofore disappointing levels of foreign direct investment is a new investment coordination body. The council, which held its first meeting in early September, is supposed to streamline the investment process and to keep potential investors informed of investment opportunities. Council... MORE

With the October 20-21 Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum fast approaching, and with it the first scheduled talks between the Russian and U.S. presidents since the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, media attention has begun to focus in recent days not... MORE

The start of hostilities against the members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network has produced a more muted reaction among Russia's regions than the original terrorist acts of September 11. Officials in several regions seemed at a loss to know how to react. Flights to... MORE

A constitutional conflict is brewing in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), geographically Russia's largest region, on whose territory Russia's diamond deposits are concentrated. In a vote on October 11, the republic's State Assembly failed to muster the required number of votes--two-thirds of the parliamentarians--to amend... MORE

The Russian government's expensive and controversial plan to raise the nuclear submarine Kursk came to a successful conclusion last week when an international consortium lifted the 18,000-ton vessel with surprising speed and ease from its 100-meter-deep grave on the floor of the Barents Sea. The... MORE

In comments that would appear to throw cold water on hopes for a negotiated end to the Chechen conflict, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, President Vladimir Putin's aide, vowed late last week that there would not be a "second Khasavyurt"--a reference to the negotiations that ended the 1994-1996... MORE

A planned new financial watchdog agency to fight against moneylaundering has become the subject of major bureaucratic in-fighting. Since the start of the year, the Finance Ministry, Interior Ministry and Tax Police, among others, have reportedly been vying to take control over the formation of... MORE

The recently formalized bloc of Ukraine's four major pro-presidential parties has a new name, For United Ukraine (FUU). It does not, however, as yet have a leader. On October 4, the leaders of the parties making up the bloc--Serhy Tyhypko of Labor Ukraine (LU), Valery... MORE

Radical nationalists and Islamists in the Republic of Tatarstan have vowed to travel to Afghanistan to help that country's ruling Taliban to fight a jihad against the U.S.-led antiterrorism coalition. NTV television reported today that a group of twenty-five men from the Tatarstan town of... MORE

Terrorism, counterterrorism and the operational grey zone between the two loom large in the history of the Russian state. Modern terrorism itself is a creation of Russian revolutionaries at the end of the nineteenth century. Its target, the Tsarist state, developed counterterrorism techniques, essential among... MORE