The president of Uzbekistan, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, issued a decree, on August 27, changing the official name of the 27-year-old “Presidential Executive Office” (Devon in Uzbek and Apparat Russian) to the “Presidential Administration.” Along with the new name, the Administration saw some personnel changes and possibly... MORE

The Kremlin has announced its decision to stage “elections” in the occupied Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” (DPR, LPR) in November, and has launched preparations for such elections (see EDM, September 12). This is not about the municipal elections (city, district, village levels) envisaged by... MORE

The Universal Patriarch in Constantinople is moving to grant the Ukrainian Orthodox Church autocephaly, that is, the status of a Church with its own canonical territory and able to choose its own hierarchs. This has been a slow-moving process until recent weeks, when Constantinople Patriarch... MORE

Ukraine’s Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan has been stepping up his insistence that train and bus routes to Russia should be canceled. Such a decision would need to be approved by President Petro Poroshenko. Omelyan’s recommendation is driven by security concerns: Kyiv alleges that visitors from... MORE

Because interpreting news from Belarus has been challenging for outsiders, some verifiable background information about the country may prove useful. For example, for the eighth straight year, the former “last dictatorship of Europe” leads the world in the number of Schengen visas allotted per 1,000... MORE

The standoff between Moldova’s ruling Democratic Party and the country’s pro-European opposition escalated following the cancelation of a democratic election for Chisinau mayor, won by the opposition, earlier this summer (see EDM, June 27). On the dawn of Moldovan Independence Day, on August 27, after... MORE

The murder of Kazakhstan’s Olympic figure skater Denis Ten in downtown Almaty, on July 19, aroused public grief and outrage as well as calls for police reforms. Two days later, thousands attended the memorial service of the 25-year-old, who won a bronze medal at the... MORE

Since the Kremlin deployed “Cossacks” to disperse an anti-government demonstration in early May (see EDM, May 17), the Russian government has pumped enormous sums of money into this pseudo-movement, giving it increasingly sordid tasks, and playing up its support for the regime via state-controlled media.... MORE

On August 8, 2008, the simmering confrontation with constant shooting and shelling between Georgian government forces and Ossetian separatists armed, financed and supported by Russia suddenly turned into an all-out Russo-Georgian war. As detailed in the 2009 study The Guns of August 2008: Russia’s War... MORE

Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka canceled his planned trip to the city of Gomel and did not appear on TV for three days prior to July 30. This sudden absence encouraged the Russian Telegram instant messenger chat channel “Nezygar” to falsely report that Lukashenka suffered an... MORE