Russian President Vladimir Putin’s working visit to Azerbaijan on August 13 (see EDM, April 14) resulted in several agreements of unprecedented scope in the oil and gas sector. Presidents Ilham Aliyev and Putin witnessed the agreements’ signing. These are documents of general intent, merely sketched... MORE

A series of explosions and a deadly fire ravaged the Kilo-type (project 877EKM or Varshavyanka) 3,000-ton submarine INS Sindhurakshak on August 14 as it was moored in Mumbai harbor and preparing to sail the next day, on August 15—India’s Independence Day. Eighteen sailors are feared... MORE

On August 1, Tajikistan’s President Emomalii Rahmon paid a working visit to Moscow where he met with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. Their meeting took place less than a year after the Russian leader had visited Dushanbe last October and a few months before the... MORE

On August 7, the leader of the united insurgent movement of Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachaevo-Cherkessia, Khasanbi Fakov, was killed in Kabardino-Balkaria’s capital Nalchik. The 34-year-old Fakov was on Russia’s federal wanted list for allegedly staging numerous attacks on law enforcement personnel. The road police stopped a... MORE

Russian President Vladimir Putin paid a one-day working visit to Azerbaijan on August 13, his first visit to that country since 2006. Two warships of Russia’s Caspian Flotilla anchored in the port of Baku on August 12, demonstrating military muscle (as in 2006) as an... MORE

Pro-Moscow activists and commentators have been universally critical of Tatarstan’s new nationality policy concept, a document adopted on August 1, which defines Kazan as the chief protector of Tatar national culture and of ethnic Tatars wherever they live (see EDM, August 6). The more moderate... MORE

In the aftermath of the military exercise in the Russian Far East on July 13, aimed at testing combat readiness and combat service support, Defense Minister Army-General Sergei Shoigu told President Vladimir Putin that the figure for the future numbers of contract soldiers (kontraktniki) must... MORE

On August 7, the acting head of Dagestan, Ramazan Abdulatipov, and other republican officials met a group of residents of the embattled Dagestani village of Gimry. The Dagestani government proposed a deal with the villagers’ leaders that should end the settlement’s suspended status. The authorities... MORE

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu’s visit to Washington last Friday could have repaired some damage from the predictably canceled presidential summit in Moscow, but the meeting failed to produce any substance for bilateral relations, which had deteriorated beyond the point... MORE

The situation in Syria this past week developed in now typical fashion, with each of the conflicting sides claiming victories. Two events that occurred, however, should be noted. First, the armed Syrian opposition took over the strategically important Minakh military airport in the area of... MORE