The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) comprising China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan was officially created on June 15, 2001. At the time the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, while the secular dictators of the impoverished, weak and corrupt former Soviet Central Asian “Stan” states were panicking.... MORE

Kyiv’s recent attempt to persuade Moscow to lower the price of gas for Ukraine proved to be a fiasco. Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, made it clear to his visiting Ukrainian counterpart Mykola Azarov on June 7 that Moscow was happy with the current situation... MORE

On June 11, the head of Ingushetia, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, met with parents of suspected rebels, along with the heads of municipal entities and law enforcement agencies, in Magas, the republic’s capital. Yevkurov called on the parents of the suspected rebels to convince their children to... MORE

Russian officials from President Dmitry Medvedev and down have recently subjected the US and NATO to a typical diplomatic offensive against missile defenses in Europe. In this offensive Russian spokesmen have reiterated their undying belief that missile defenses threaten Russian nuclear weapons, strategic stability, the... MORE

A wave of high-profile corruption scandals, combined with the reported hemorrhaging of funds from the defense budget has underscored both the scale and demoralizing impact of the culture of kickbacks and “misappropriation” that so bedevils Russia’s defense ministry. Already, the level of loss to the... MORE

In an open letter on June 1, Circassian activists condemned derogatory and scandalous remarks about them made by Russian State Duma deputy Sergei Markov. The First Caucasian Information channel, a Tbilisi based Russian-language TV channel, asked several Russian public figures, including Markov, about Georgia’s recognition... MORE

There has been a remarkable variety of engagements with the West for Russia last week, and it has achieved exactly what it wanted to achieve – nothing. Moscow played rounds of gas diplomacy with Ukraine and missile defense diplomacy with NATO, sanctions diplomacy in the... MORE

*Visit the Jamestown blog on Russia and Eurasia (https://www.jamestown.org/blog) On June 10, former Colonel Yuri Budanov was gunned down in Moscow. His murder is expected to galvanize Russian nationalists. Already flowers were reportedly taken to the scene of the murder, and nationalist activists are reportedly... MORE

Former Russian army colonel Yury Budanov, who was convicted in 2003 of strangling to death an 18-year-old Chechen girl, Elza Kungaeva, while serving as a tank commander in Chechnya in 2000, was murdered today (June 10) in Moscow. Investigators said the car used by the... MORE

On June 7 in Moscow, Prime Ministers Vladimir Putin and Nikolai Azarov held tense negotiations on the terms of Russian gas supplies to Ukraine. The government in Kyiv and its Donetsk-based industrial interests are seeking a second round of gas price-cutting, after that agreed in... MORE