The armed conflict in the North Caucasus continues to kill and maim (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/224400/). Murders, kidnappings and explosions have become the daily routine in this part of Russia. Only suicide bombings carried out by the armed resistance groups provide a slightly different picture. Neither side of... MORE

The Georgian government under Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili is escalating the level of repression and threats against the pro-Western opposition United National Movement (UNM). The arrest of UNM’s leader Vano Merabishvili on May 21 caps a series of repressive measures, which Ivanishvili had earlier threatened... MORE

On May 21, United National Movement (UNM) Secretary General Vano Merabishvili, a probable candidate in the upcoming presidential election, former internal affairs minister and prime minister, was arrested by prosecutors on criminal charges, and detained without bail. The prosecution announced that Merabishvili and co-accused Zurab... MORE

All too often, the more significant pieces of news from Belarus are not the ones that are discussed most frequently and voluminously. The second half of May has been no exception. For example, on May 18, the official news agency Belta briefly reported on an... MORE

The office of Georgia’s prosecutor general announced it had arrested Secretary General of the United National Movement (UNM) Vano Merabishvili after questioning him for five hours (https://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=26090). Merabishvili had previously served as Georgia’s interior minister (December 2004–July 2012) and prime minister (July–October 2012). He has... MORE

In his childhood, Vladislav Surkov, an ethnic Chechen by birth, initially had his father’s surname, Dudaev—a surname that is related to the Zandak teip (clan) (www.anticompromat.org/surkov/surkbio.html). However, with Russian first and last names, he managed to achieve not simply a breathtaking career, but to become... MORE

Vladimir Putin’s third presidential term began on May 7, 2012, and has been dominated by an increasingly vicious campaign of suppression of civil society and of any public manifestations of political dissent. Human rights and non-governmental advocacy groups are being labeled “foreign agents”—essentially spies for... MORE

On April 24, reports emerged from Xinjiang that 21 people had been killed in what was reported as a “terrorist clash” in Bachu County, Kashgar Prefecture (Xinhua, April 24). The incident came as U.S. Ambassador to Beijing Gary Locke was undertaking the first visit to... MORE

A near-schizophrenic bifurcation has informed Chinese-style reform as implemented by the six-month old administration of General Secretary Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang. On the one hand, the preserving stability (weiwen) apparatus has pulled out all the stops to shackle dissidents and stymie other “destabilizing... MORE

The first aphorism of politics is that “all politics is local,” and one of the first rules of China watching is to look for domestic factors. The party’s domestic focus is highlighted by signs of ideological conservatism and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “China Dream” to... MORE