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

The paramount news in Moscow last week was the United States Department of the Treasury’s release of the long-expected report on senior Russian political figures and oligarchs—the so-called “Kremlin List” (see EDM, February 1). The list was mandated by the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions... MORE

Roscosmos, the Russian government corporation responsible for Moscow’s space program, is consuming ever larger amounts of budgetary funds but is failing to provide anything in return. That situation has led to frequent predictions the Russian space program is on the brink of collapse. Some even... MORE

Russia, one of the world’s two largest nuclear powers, pursued internally contradictory and frequently inconsequential policies during 2017 when it came to questions of limiting further proliferation of these weapons or preserving important arms control treaties with the United States. And these policies can be... MORE

The predictability of the presidential elections in Russia, scheduled for March 18, forces the authorities to look for inventive ways to attract voters to the polls and ensure a high-enough turnout. When the result is known in advance, many people will surely prefer to ignore... MORE

On January 27, residents of Georgia’s northeastern village of Duisi, in Pankisi gorge, largely populated by Kists, a 40,000-strong ethnic minority related to the Chechen people, demanded that Georgia’s State Security Service (SSS) and the Chief Prosecutor meet with them to discuss details of a... MORE

The constitutional amendments Armenia adopted in December 2015 provided for a fundamental change—shifting from a presidential to a parliamentary system, but establishing a transitional period until the end of Serzh Sargsyan’s second presidential term in 2018. The new president elected by the National Assembly in... MORE

During Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s meeting in Washington with his US counterpart, Donald Trump, on January 16, a suggestion reportedly came up to transfer the venue of talks and negotiations about the war in eastern Ukraine from Minsk to Astana. An avalanche of opinions followed.... MORE