On May 6 in Moscow, President Dmitry Medvedev and Foreign Affairs Minister Sergei Lavrov each received Lavrov’s Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi. According to Lavrov at the concluding news conference, Russia and China would “coordinate their actions” in the UN Security Council and beyond to support... MORE

NATO allies seek additional military, political, and financial means to overcome the unanticipated stalemate in Libya. Alliance leaders are also addressing incipient symptoms of fatigue with the seemingly protracted operation, conducted by an ad-hoc group of countries on NATO's collective behalf. At the same time,... MORE

Boko Haram carried out a series of attacks in northern Nigeria during the country’s elections, which began on April 9 with legislative elections and continued on April 16 and April 26 with presidential and gubernatorial elections. While Boko Haram has typically targeted government buildings, military... MORE

During a U.S. Senate hearing on March 29, 2011 on the composition of Libya’s revolutionary rebel movement, EUCOM commander and NATO Supreme Allied Commander for Europe Admiral James Stavridis commented that intelligence informed him that there were “flickers” of transnational al-Qaeda jihadis operating in the... MORE

Russia has signaled that it can leverage its veto in the UN Security Council to entrap NATO in a protracted conflict in Libya. On April 26, Foreign Affairs Minister, Sergei Lavrov, told the media that Russia would not support a new Security Council resolution, if... MORE

After announcing that Libyan troops had suspended operations in Misurata, an official of the Libyan government suggested that armed tribesmen loyal to the regime would soon take their place. It would then be up to the tribesmen to negotiate with the besieged rebels or to... MORE

Several reports circulated through the international media in early April indicating that a new semi-autonomous state, tentatively named Jubaland (or alternately “Azaniya”), would be created in southwestern Somalia to contain the Somali militant outfit Harakat al-Shabaab. Jubaland is purportedly being created by Kenyan authorities to... MORE

On April 21, Gazeta Yuga, a weekly newspaper that is published in Nalchik, reported on the continuing efforts of Circassian groups in Kabardino-Balkaria to help their ethnic kin stuck in the fighting in Libya. Some activists in the North Caucasus have proposed that Libyans of... MORE

Russia is moving fast to gel the stalemate in Libya, pin down the US and NATO there, and exploit their predicament by casting itself as a conflict-resolution facilitator (EDM, April 21).Moscow is in a hurry because time is not yet on its side.  NATO and... MORE

The development of the popular uprising in eastern Libya transformed the Arab Revolution from a “spectator sport” for the rest of the world and created real problems for Russian national interests. Russian experts on the Middle East were quick to warn of the dangers of... MORE