As January 2016 drew to a close, news pertaining to Belarus’s relations with its two large neighbors—Russia and Europe—again overshadowed any developments emanating from the Eastern European country itself. First, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) issued its report on Belarus’s recent... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. Western officials and commentators seem, on the whole, to overestimate Russia’s capacity and intentions to recapture Moldova by exploiting that country‘s current crisis. This overestimation partly explains the recent decisions in Washington, Brussels and Bucharest to accept billionaire... MORE

Two months ago (December 2015), authorities in Dagestan attempted to shut down mosques in the capital Makhachkala that they did not control. The attempt ended in an embarrassing defeat for the authorities and the official mufti of the republic. The mufti lost the fight for... MORE

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the start of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) (1966–76), a political and cultural watershed for China. Chinese rock star and pop culture icon Cui Jian spoke for many when he said that the Cultural Revolution is still... MORE

Many international observers anticipated that Russia would move to exploit the anti-government protests in Moldova in order to (as the assumptions went) “destabilize Moldova’s pro-Europe government,” “halt and derail Moldova’s European course,” or even stage a “Maidan in reverse” in Chisinau. The Kremlin was, at... MORE

Mongolia’s national energy program has made significant progress in the past year. According to Energy Minister Dashzeveg Zorigt, in 2015, legislation regulating the energy sector was revised, electric power imports (one-fifth of energy comes from neighboring China and Russia) were significantly cut by $9 million,... MORE

The government of Belarus hopes to initiate a new credit program with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in February of this year (BelaPAN, January 11). Representatives of the IMF confirmed in recent months that they have seen considerable progress in their negotiations with the Belarusian... MORE

On January 12, Kabardino-Balkaria’s governor, Yuri Kokov, met with the ataman (head) of the Terek Cossack Force, Aleksandr Zhuravsky. The governor’s official website pithily said that the two discussed issues pertaining to the support of traditional Cossack culture and strengthening neighborly relations between the regions... MORE

On January 29, the National Statistics Office (NSO) of Georgia released new economic data, which shows that in 2015, the country’s GDP grew by just 2.8 percent, significantly less than its 4.6 percent growth from 2014 (Geostat.ge, January 29). In fact, for a lower middle... MORE

Because Vladimir Putin has made the presence of ethnic Russians in other countries so central to his efforts to expand Moscow’s influence, their departure from any region or country means far more now than it did a decade ago. Nowhere has their exit been more... MORE