July 10 marked the 24th anniversary of Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s tenure as the president of Belarus. Numerous publications reviewed the dynamics of the country’s basic indicators over that period and reflected on putative past and possible future alternatives to authoritarian rule there. Interestingly, the term “dictatorship,”... MORE

Every six months, the Russian government conscripts a new cohort of soldiers for its armed services. For the last five years, since the military draft was renewed across the North Caucasus, the enlistment quotas for republics there have been raised and lowered erratically. This has... MORE

The leaders of ten Georgian opposition parties affiliated with the coalition “Power Is in Unity” gathered near the Bagrat Temple, in the city of Kutaisi, on July 18, to name their joint candidate for president (Georgia Today, July 18). Presidential elections in this South Caucasus... MORE

Kazakhstanis are increasingly skeptical of close ties with both Russians and Chinese, profoundly limiting the ability of the former to recover the influence Moscow once had there and making it far more difficult for Beijing to move in and supplant it. Further complicating this situation... MORE

Three sets of law enforcement actions recently administered in Belarus help to shed light on what rule of law means in this country. Thus, on July 4, Alexander Knyrovich, the CEO of SarmatThermo-Engineering, a company that makes heating network pipes, was sentenced to six years... MORE

At the end of June 2018, President Vladimir Putin named six plenipotentiaries to run Russia’s so-called “federal districts” (RBC, June 26). Four were holdovers, the remainder—new appointees. But all of them, notably, had close links to the Kremlin bureaucracy or the “power ministries” (siloviki). In... MORE

The term “pan-Turkism,” which carried a similarly ominous meaning as “enemy of the people” under Joseph Stalin and his Soviet successors, has become a strong component of Kazakhs’ search for national identity ever since their country achieved independence more than a quarter of a century... MORE

For Italy’s new and unusual ruling coalition composed of the 5 Stars Movement (5SM) and the League (previously, the Northern League), foreign policy issues remained conspicuously marginal in the two populist parties’ “contract of government” (Il Foglio, May 17). However, recent actions taken by their... MORE

Three implicitly interrelated events eclipsed all other developments in Belarus over the course of the past two weeks: Belarus’s Independence Day (July 3); the inauguration of the Maly Trostenets memorial (June 29); and, strangely enough, an off-the-cuff pronouncement by President Alyaksandr Lukashenka seemingly lamenting the... MORE

It is notoriously challenging to acquire accurate socio-economic data on a country as insulated as Turkmenistan. And the difficulty is further heightened by the fact that the autocratic government in Ashgabat consistently paints society in roseate terms, even as the Turkmenistani opposition scattered abroad relates... MORE