According to Russian analysts and leaders like Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, Russia has turned to Asia because of Western sanctions and is making steady progress there in achieving its objectives (RT, June 11). However, such talk is entirely unfounded. If anything, Russian relations with Japan... MORE

With more and more former members of the Caucasus Emirate pledging allegiance to the “caliphate” of the Islamic State, the situation in the North Caucasus may destabilize further. What is happening is not the disbanding of one rebel organization and its replacement with a more... MORE

The general election in Turkey on June 7 has radically changed the country’s political landscape. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has lost its absolute majority, winning only 258 of the 276 seats it needed, and the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) has now... MORE

The chairwoman of the Central Electoral Commission of Belarus, Lidia Ermoshina, has proposed to conduct the upcoming presidential elections on October 11—that is, more than one month earlier than the previously set date of November 15. The official explanation of this shift has to do... MORE

Nearly seven years ago, in the fall of 2007, Islamic militants in the North Caucasus who were unhappy with the ideology of independence for Ichkeria replaced it with an Islamic ideology and declared the formation of the Caucasus Emirate (Kavkazsky Uzel, December 29, 2014). The... MORE

To read Part One, please click here.To read Part Two, please click here.To read Part Three, please click here. To help lessen Belarus’s economic dependence on Russia, and reach out to mainstream Belarusian society, the European Union has a range of non-political instruments available. The... MORE

Russian analysts are beginning to wonder whether Moscow has grown tired of Chechnya’s ruler, Ramzan Kadyrov, and wants to replace him. Recent attacks on human rights activists in Chechnya received unusually wide and negative media coverage in Russia, even though years of routine rights violations... MORE

The appointment of former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili as the head of government administration (governor) of Odesa province in Ukraine produced a wave of speculation about his future plans in Georgia. Immediately after taking office in Odesa, Saakashvili gave several interviews for Georgian media outlets,... MORE

On January 1, 2015, the new Criminal Code, which was approved by President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s July 2014 decree, took effect in Kazakhstan. Hailed by the authorities as a means to modernize the domestic penal system in line with international standards, it introduces a number of... MORE

Most analysts concerned with the Circassian issue in the North Caucasus have focused on the three republics where subgroups of that nation are the titular nationalities—Adygea, Karachaevo-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria—or on the enormous diasporas in Turkey, Jordan and elsewhere. But another player has emerged in the... MORE