Moscow is again stirring the pot in northeastern Estonia, trying to pit the ethnic-Russian community there against Tallinn. And it is doing so in the classic tradition of Vladimir Putin’s “hybrid” war: specifically, Russia is using a report prepared by the Estonian Security Police that... MORE

Following a month of lull in August, when the parliament was in recess and the majority of cabinet ministers took a short break from meetings and press briefings, Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev opened the fall’s joint session of the Mazhilis and the Senate (lower and... MORE

Sunday’s (September 18) parliamentary elections in Russia were preceded by perhaps the country’s most listless and dullest campaign in years. The official results rather persuasively underscore this characterization. For the third time in a row, the same four parties—United Russia (officially having received 54.28 percent... MORE

Last Sunday (September 18), Russians went to the polls to elect the seventh State Duma in the post-Soviet history of their state. It is extremely difficult to say how many of them actually cast ballots because the official preliminary data on voter participation (47.8 percent,... MORE

Starting in 2014, the jamaats of the armed Islamist underground movement in the North Caucasus began, one by one, to pledge allegiance to the so-called Islamic State (IS). Kabardino-Balkarian insurgents split into those who became part of the Islamic State and those who remained loyal... MORE

On September 2, Georgia’s State Audit Office (SAO) fined a ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party member and its affiliated organization, as well as the donors to two opposition parties—the Alliance of Patriots and State for People—for illegal donations. The SAO’s actions appeared to reflect this... MORE

Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has been carrying on a rapprochement with the Vatican and has even been pushing for Pope Francis to visit Minsk (Interfax, May 23, August 19). Such efforts, along with discussions in the Belarusian media about the possibility of having the Belarusian... MORE

On September 5, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) arrested Rasul Saduev, the head of the Criminal Investigations Department (Ugolovny Rozysk) of the Ministry of Interior in the Dagestani city of Khasavyurt. On the same day, the security services also arrested police colonel Gimbat Likhiyalov,... MORE

The recent trial of lawyers, legal assistants and NGO personnel who were detained during mass arrests more than a year ago has given the clearest indication to date of whether the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under President Xi Jinping is honoring his oft-repeated commitments to... MORE

Bomber Strikes Chinese Embassy in Bishkek On August 30, a car bomb exploded outside the Chinese embassy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Three people were injured in the explosion. Fortunately the car bomb was not able to directly ram the embassy, though the explosion was strong enough... MORE