Bulgaria has tied the approval of the South Stream gas pipeline to favorable terms in the upcoming gas supply contract with Gazprom. According to an official statement from the Bulgarian government, “The condition for the approval and signing of the final investment agreement is the... MORE

On November 5, the Russian company ROSSPEN published the memoirs of former chairman of the Parliament Stanislau Shushkevich, the first leader of Belarus after independence. The book came out in a Russian-language edition because none of Belarus’s publishers dared to issue the original in Belarusian.... MORE

The parliamentary election on October 28 disillusioned those who hoped for progress in Ukraine after the botched election to the regional and municipal councils in 2010. Like two years ago, radicals performed better than expected while the lack of a level playing field and the... MORE

Russia is moving rapidly to start building the South Stream natural gas pipeline before the end of the year. On October 29, Serbia became the first Gazprom partner to announce its final investment decision on the construction of South Stream. Bulgaria will follow suit on... MORE

No two countries in the world today are as close as Russia and Belarus. This closeness has multiple aspects, one of which is structural affinity between the Russian and Belarusian societies. Both are afflicted with an internal schism, and the two resulting segments of each... MORE

Six exit polls at the closing of the October 28 parliamentary election gave the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reforms (UDAR), led by boxing champion Vitaliy Klychko, between 13–15 percent of the vote. Together with 23–25 percent for jailed former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchina (Fatherland)... MORE

The temporary thaw in the usually icy relations between Moldova and its breakaway region of Transnistria has apparently come to an end. A warning signal was sent by the Russian foreign ministry special envoy Sergei Gubarev on October 13 during his visit to Tiraspol, Transnistria’s... MORE

Ukraine’s two most popular opposition forces, Punch (UDAR) and Fatherland, have had a serious quarrel ahead of the October 28 parliamentary election. First, the two parties failed to agree which of their candidates were supposed to bow out of the races in single-seat constituencies so... MORE

Work has begun on the construction of a Belarusian nuclear power plant at Astravec in Hrodna Region, about 16 kilometers from the border with Lithuania. While Belarus has actively promoted the project, together with its Russian designer and contractor, both the general public and neighboring... MORE

To Belarus, Russia is not just the “meaningful other.” It provides an existential lifeline to Belarus as a de facto custodian of Belarus’s socio-economic model and a cultural magnet of sorts. It was only after Russia dropped the price of natural gas sold to Belarus... MORE