On March 21, 2014, three days after he signed the treaty that “legalized” the annexation of Crimea as a new subject of the Russian Federation, President Vladimir Putin officially annexed Crimea. The March 18 treaty was co-signed by the speaker of the Crimean Parliament, Vladimir... MORE

Only a year since assuming the top Party post in November 2012, Xi Jinping has emerged as the strongest Chinese leader in decades. His sweeping anti-corruption and mass line campaigns have shaken the bureaucracy, consolidated his power, and removed the supporters of former security tsar... MORE

Since the Third Plenum in November of last year, a couple of interesting documents have appeared that have begun to add meat to the Plenum’s bare bones recommendations for reforming China’s legal system. Efforts appear to be underway to centralize court finance, end Re-education Through... MORE

On the night of March 11, police officer Batyr Belkharoev was shot while he was driving his car near the village of Sagopshi in Ingushetia’s Malgobek district (https://lifenews.ru/news/128832). He died on the spot, while a relative traveling with him, Magomed Belkharoev, was wounded and taken... MORE

Civil activists in Kabardino-Balkaria have launched a campaign to improve the status of the regional languages of the Kabardins (a.k.a. Circassians) and the Balkars. The activists say that with the republican parliament in the process of adopting new legislation about languages, it has ignored many... MORE

The hottest issues for Belarus these days are prospects for further economic growth under new conditions—in part informed by Russia’s annexation of Crimea and Belarus’s official position with regard to this groundbreaking event. Even before the crisis in Ukraine, Belarus faced dwindling economic growth, an... MORE

While television has mostly been state-controlled for a long time in Russia, newspapers and Internet media have remained relatively free. That relative freedom appears to be one of the first casualties in the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine as it seeks to prevent a Maidan-style protest... MORE

If Moscow absorbs Crimea, as now seems likely, this illegal act will pose a serious threat to the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church. Indeed, the annexation of Ukrainian territory will likely lead to the formation of a single autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church and... MORE

On March 13, Alexei Navalny, arguably the most popular Russian opposition figure, weighed in on the crisis surrounding the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea. Pointing to the fact that the Russian government does not allow the Russian people to hold referendums inside the country, Navalny asked... MORE

The only real result from the hastily organized and crudely manipulated political act in Crimea last Sunday (March 16)—which should not be called a “referendum,” because it had nothing to do with a free expression of popular will—was that it did, indeed, happen. A last-minute... MORE