Circassians in the North Caucasus were infuriated by the speech delivered by Abkhazia’s president, Alexander Ankvab, at an official celebration. On September 29, the leader of the Georgian breakaway region delivered a speech to a meeting in Sukhumi dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the... MORE

Russia’s deputy prime minister tasked with overseeing the defense industry, Dmitry Rogozon, is also billed as the country’s “space Tsar,” and he is presently turning his attention to large-scale sectorial reorganization to boost the Russian space sector’s competitiveness. On October 9, Rogozin briefed his close... MORE

With the Olympics in Sochi scheduled to start on February 7, 2014, the situation in the North Caucasus is not improving as quickly as the authorities in the Kremlin would like (https://www.sochi2014.com/). The steps the Russian government has taken so far appear to be insufficient... MORE

Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych inspected the Army and Air Force’s performance as commander-in-chief at the Yavoriv military and peacekeeping training center in Lviv oblast on October 1. The website of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense (accessed October 6) reported that the purpose of the year-end... MORE

Effective from October 7, Russia has banned the imports of Lithuanian dairy products. The Consumer Protection and Sanitary Inspectorate (Rospotrebnadzor) chief, Gennady Onishchenko, announced the ban, and now threatens to step up testing of Lithuanian meat and fish products at the border. Moscow has not... MORE

Police in Kabardino-Balkaria conducted operations against the armed resistance and took preventive measures to foil terrorist attacks in the republic throughout the month of September (https://kabardino-balkaria.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/172027/).At the start of October, a young man was killed in Kabardino-Balkaria’s Baksan district. According to police, he was driving... MORE

The Kremlin is demonstrating its growing anger with the European Union for encroaching onto the territory of the former Soviet Union, which Moscow considers its exclusive sphere of influence. An important summit between the EU and the Eastern Partnership countries (Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Belarus, Moldova... MORE

A senior executive at Russia’s state arms export company, Rosoboronexport, has said that Russia will sign a contract to sell the advanced Su-35 jet to China in 2014, while confirming that the deal is not on track to be finished in 2013 (RIA Novosti, September... MORE

In the week before the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit in Bishkek on September 12, Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping visited four countries on China’s western flank—Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan—and met their presidents. In between these visits, Xi attended the G20 summit in Moscow... MORE

Over the last few months, Mongolia has hosted or taken part in several multi-national military exercises with the aim to develop the Mongolian army’s peacekeeping abilities, as well as a way to leverage military-to-military ties as a tool of diplomacy. On August 10–13, Mongolia held... MORE