On October 6, the regional court of Aktobe in western Kazakhstan announced verdicts on four members of a terrorist gang. The men were accused of killing two policemen and a special task force officer during shootouts between a group of armed local residents and the... MORE

The updated estimates of Turkmenistan’s vast gas reserves (see EDM, October 20) and the European Commission’s support for a trans-Caspian pipeline to Europe are unwelcome by Moscow. On October 14, President Dmitry Medvedev chaired a special meeting of Russia’s Security Council on Russia-EU relations in... MORE

Two weeks before the presidential elections in Kyrgyzstan the question many in the country ask is whether there will be a second round of voting. The frontrunner, Prime Minister Almazabek Atambayev, certainly hopes to secure victory during the first round on October 30.Although Kyrgyzstan has... MORE

By the latest estimates, Turkmenistan’s potential gas reserves are even larger than previously thought, encouraging the European Union to tap into this potential, and motivating Ashgabat to cooperate with Brussels and Baku on a trans-Caspian pipeline bound for Europe despite Moscow’s opposition.On October 11 in... MORE

When the British-Russian rivalry was starting in Central Asia about two centuries ago, few could have predicted that India – a British platform of that geopolitical struggle – would rise, as a sovereign power, to project influence in the very region once vied over by... MORE

China’s European Satellite Launch Sets New Milestones On October 7, a Chinese Long March-3 rocket blasted off from Xichang Satellite Launch Center, Sichuan Province, delivering a French Eutelsat communications satellite into orbit. This marked the first Chinese launch of a Western communications satellite since the... MORE

On September 29, Kazakhstan’s upper house of parliament passed a new controversial law on religious activities and religious organizations intended to curb the spread of radical Islam in the country. The bill was approved speedily after a wave of terrorist attacks swept western Kazakhstan during... MORE

Russia’s prime minister and president-in-waiting, Vladimir Putin, has published a lengthy manifesto on integrating the “post-Soviet space” economically around Russia (“New Integration Project for Eurasia: The Future Is Being Born Today,” Izvestiya, October 4). The publication’s immediate context is electoral, but the implementation is already... MORE

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir is yet to win the presidency formally next year, but he has already laid out ambitious foreign policy plans in regard to former Soviet states, Russia’s “traditional sphere of influence,” as the Kremlin often defines it. In his recent op-ed piece... MORE

This week, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin – the ruling United Russia party’s official candidate for reelection as president for a third six-year term next March – published a major policy article in the Izvestiya daily. Putin announced a long-term strategy to build a Eurasian superstate... MORE