On July 19, General Dzhurakhon Zoirov, head of Tajikistan’s Anti-Organized Crime Division of the Ministry of the Interior, announced that Amriddin Tabarov (a.k.a. Dumullo Amriddin) has been placed on Interpol’s international wanted list (Ozodi, July 20). Tabarov is purportedly the leader of Jamaat Ansarullah an... MORE

On July 30, the Russian security services reported that four suspected rebels were killed in Stavropol region. A source in the local police said the incident took place on July 29 near the town of Tersky, located in Georgievsky district in the southern part of... MORE

Just as the Republic of Tatarstan did routinely under its former President Mintimer Shaimiev, Kazan has again taken a Moscow policy and transformed it in a way that is very much at odds with the one articulated by the central Russian leadership. It has cleverly... MORE

In a surprising move, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka did not end up going to Kiev, Ukraine, to celebrate the 1025th anniversary of the baptism of Rus, a common legacy of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, solemnly celebrated in all the three East Slavic countries (https://naviny.by/rubrics/politic/2013/07/30/ic_articles_112_182507/). Observers... MORE

Data just released by Georgia’s state agency for statistics (GeoStat) show a pronounced economic downturn. The robust growth that Georgia was experiencing until the October 2012 elections has petered out following the regime change. In June 2013, the economy contracted for the first time since... MORE

On July 27, a group of Dagestani traders clashed with the police near the market in Moscow’s Ochakovo-Matveyevskoye district. One police officer was injured in the fighting. The incident quickly rose to prominence in the Russian national news as video recordings proliferated across the Internet... MORE

Last week, Edward Snowden departed from the Sheremetyevo Airport—though not to a dubious “safe haven” like Bolivia but to an undisclosed location in Russia as his plea for a temporary asylum was granted. Russian authorities had obviously expected that his celebrity status would evaporate after... MORE

Astrakhan is a port city on the lower part of the Volga River and a large military harbor on the Caspian Sea. To the east, Astrakhan region borders Kazakhstan; to the west, the region faces the North Caucasus. Its proximity to that unstable area is... MORE

Interviewed by the Lithuanian daily Lietuvos Rytas (July 20) and the Brussels-based EUobserver (July 29), Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili has announced that he intends to resign from the government before the end of 2013, and instead become a civil society leader. In that case,... MORE

On July 6, the pro-government website 12news.uz published an article by Uzbekistani Professor Rustamjon Abdullaev entitled, “Uzbekistan must join NATO and stake territorial and other claims against some former Soviet Union countries.” In his article, Abdullaev articulates Tashkent’s strong opposition to the construction of hydroelectric... MORE