A parliamentary election campaign has been officially under way in Ukraine since July 30. The ruling Party of Regions (PRU) will compete for victory with the united opposition formed by several nationalist parties, the largest of which are Fatherland, which is headed by the imprisoned... MORE

On August 5, a group of protesters blocked an international rail line in Dagestan for two hours. The railway links Russia with Azerbaijan and Dagestan’s capital, Makhachkala, with Moscow. The protesters were from the village of Komsomolskoye in northern Dagestan’s Kizilyurt district and were protesting... MORE

Since 2008, Russia has been attempting to substantially reform its armed forces, and in 2010, it launched a massive procurement or State Armaments Program (SAP) for 2011-2020. That program calls for spending 23 trillion rubles ($723 billion) by 2020 to attain an armed force that... MORE

On August 3, Belarusian television stations explained why the Belarusian authorities have refused to extend the accreditation of Swedish Ambassador Stefan Eriksson. On the program Panarama, Syarhey Husachenka stated first that it was a routine matter, and the Swedish ambassador had already spent a long... MORE

On August 1, Circassian activists marked the Day of the Repatriated Person in the North Caucasus. This year, the celebrations were strongly influenced by the Syrian crisis, turning into an event of solidarity with the Syrian Circassians. On the same day, several Circassian organizations jointly... MORE

There is no royal tourism to Siberian natural preserves or Black Sea beaches for President Vladimir Putin this August; instead, he is hurrying from the naval shipyard in Severodvinsk to the garrison of an airborne brigade in Ulyanovsk oblast to the “patriotic” youth camp Seliger,... MORE

Within the period of a few short weeks, two very similar environmental protests erupted in Qidong, Jiangsu and in Shifang, Sichuan. In both incidents thousands of protesters demanded the end of construction projects seen as environmentally destructive and harmful to local interests. While both reached... MORE

The impending trial of Gu Kailai, the wife of disgraced Politburo member Bo Xilai, on murder charges says a lot about the latest developments in Chinese politics, particularly Beijing’s renewed determination to put stability and “harmony” ahead of political and legal reform. The Chinese Communist... MORE

Much of the July 24 hearing of the Subcommittee on Europe and Eurasia of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (for Part One of this article, detailing security issues, see EDM, August 1) focused on how to promote US economic goals in Central Asia, as well... MORE

The Republic of Tatarstan, willingly or not, is starting to move down the same path as the North Caucasus region. This trend is exemplified by incidents in the republic’s capital Kazan on July 19, when an attempt was made on the life of the republican... MORE