Islam is being politicized in an unusual and somewhat unexpected way in Crimea. Certain Crimean Tatar leaders have been using the existence of Islamic groups on the peninsula to advance their own communal demands even as some Ukrainian and Russian leaders have been invoking the... MORE

Adolf Hitler’s birthday, traditionally a concern for authorities determined to prevent racist violence in Russia (see Part One of this two-part article in EDM, April 15), appears to have passed without much disruption in 2013. At the time of writing, there were relatively few reports... MORE

The Kumyks are the third largest ethnic group in Dagestan. According to official data for 2010, an estimated 422,000 Kumyks lived in the mountainous republic (www.webcitation.org/616BvJEEv), ranking third after the Avars, with a population of 814,000, and Dargins, with a population of 510,000 in the... MORE

Moldova is again experiencing a vacancy of government. The tripartite Alliance for European Integration (AEI), under the Liberal-Democrat Prime Minister Vlad Filat, collapsed on March 5, abandoned by its other two parties. The Democratic Party, led by Parliament Chairman Marian Lupu officially and by business... MORE

Moldova’s wealthiest businessman, Vlad Plahotniuc, is expanding his influence over state institutions. The power struggle, pitting Plahotniuc along with his Democratic Party (officially led by Parliament Chairman Marian Lupu) against Prime Minister Vlad Filat’s Liberal-Democrat Party, has torn apart the governing Alliance for European Integration... MORE

For the eleventh time since 2000, President Vladimir Putin (60) ran a televised national question-and-answer (Q & A) session that lasted almost nonstop for five hours on April 25. Economic growth, which made Putin popular before, has slowed down almost to a stop. Meanwhile, the... MORE

Since becoming General Secretary at the 18th Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) last November, Xi Jinping has talked about the “China Dream” (zhongguo meng) at least five times. On all these occasions, Xi has equated the China Dream with “fulfilling the great... MORE

On April 4, various Georgian news agencies, based on an article by the British newspaper The Guardian, reported that Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili was the owner in 2006–2009 of a secret offshore company, Bosherston Overseas Corp. (BOC), in the British Virgin Islands (www.geworld.ge, www.netgazeti.ge,... MORE

On April 18, against the backdrop of the ongoing territorial dispute between Chechnya and Ingushetia, about 300 law enforcement agents from the Chechen Republic entered the village of Arshty in Ingushetia’s Sunzha district. The incursion took the tensions between Ingushetia and Chechnya to a whole... MORE

The launch of a Talysh-language radio station based in the Armenian-occupied territories but directed at the members of that ethnic minority elsewhere in Azerbaijan is part of the latest chapter in the long and dangerous history of efforts by Azerbaijan’s three neighbors—Armenia, Iran and the... MORE