Throughout its history, Russia has faced a fundamental geographic problem: the rivers on which the country relies, both during shipping seasons and in winter-time as “ice roads,” flow almost exclusively from north to south rather than east to west. No Russian government has ever succeeded... MORE

Throughout 2017, Australia and New Zealand were roiled by controversies surrounding alleged attempts by pro-Beijing lobbying groups to influence government policies. In Australia, one of the foremost figures at the center of these controversies has been Huang Xiangmo. Huang, who first became wealthy as a... MORE

Despite the repeal of the “One Child Policy” and implementation of the “Comprehensive Two-Child Policy” in January 2016, in mid-January, the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics released a report that revealed that China’s population has continued to decline (The Beijing News, January 18; China Brief,... MORE

About 80 Russian athletes marched in the opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in PyeongChang, South Korea, last Friday (February 9), under the Olympic flag carried by a Korean volunteer. Only 168 individuals were invited by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to partake... MORE

Zurab Abashidze, the Georgian prime minister’s special representative to Russia, held a meeting with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin in Prague, on January 31, within the framework of the bilateral informal dialogue launched in late 2012 (Civil Georgia, February 1). During such meetings, the... MORE

Rustam Inoyatov, until recently the head of Uzbekistan’s National Security Service (NSS), the local successor of the Soviet KGB, is possibly the second most durable senior official in Tashkent, giving way only to the late president Islam Karimov himself. Many other senior officials were promoted... MORE

Two Russian Su-25SM attack jets were overflying the rebel-controlled Idlib province in northwestern Syria, on February 3, when one of the planes was hit by an infrared-signature- homing surface-to-air missile fired from a man-portable air-defense system (MANPADS). Russian commanders insist the jets were on a... MORE

In the last month alone, local authorities closed almost 100 mosques in the northern part of Tajikistan, the latest effort by Dushanbe to control Islam in the most fervently Muslim country in Central Asia. Yet, this campaign is exceedingly likely to backfire by driving both... MORE

Westinghouse will extend nuclear fuel deliveries to seven of Ukraine’s fifteen nuclear power units to 2021–2025, in line with a contract signed between this firm and Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear power company Energoatom. Deliveries to Ukraine under the new deal are to begin immediately after the... MORE

The passing of Gene Sharp, the author of the influential 1973 book The Politics of Nonviolent Action, did not go unnoticed across the post-Soviet space. A sampling of headlines in the Russian media say much about the late political scientists’ perception in that realm: “The... MORE