Ukraine, which with Poland co-hosts the Euro 2012 football championship from June 8-July 1, has been lambasted for corruption and racism. Widespread reports have focused on Ukraine spending more than Poland on Euro 2012 even though its GDP per capita is four times smaller and... MORE

On June 7, President Vladimir Putin issued a decree creating the Presidential Council for Relations between Nationalities. The council’s statute stipulates its role as a consultative governmental body to help implement government nationalities policy. The council will have no direct administrative power, but its decisions... MORE

The protest rally planned for June 12 will probably not be much different in numbers and slogans from the half dozen rallies that Moscow has seen since the blatantly fraudulent parliamentary elections of last December. Yet, it will deliver more proof that the opposition, disunited... MORE

Relations between Russian authorities and the country’s Muslim subjects have been a sensitive issue since Islam appeared within the limits of the Russian Empire. Islam today remains one of the most problematic issues in Russian politics and is the main destabilizing force that could trigger... MORE

June 5, 2012 will likely go down in history as the turning point in the development of Russian parliamentarism. Under Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian State Duma (lower chamber of Parliament) has been a rubber-stamp body in which the United Russia Party and... MORE

Russia’s rulers seem confused on how to stop the continued public anti-Vladimir Putin protests in Moscow, shifting from aggressive intimidation and use of force to attempts to disorient and pacify the opposition by co-opting some of its ideas and leaders into the official fold. The... MORE

Kabardino-Balkaria is likely to face the worst case scenario in the security sphere this summer and fall. The republic’s jamaat seems to have finished regrouping, having recovered following its deep crisis of 2011, when it lost practically all of its top and middle-ranking leadership. After... MORE

The courts in Mangistau region of Kazakhstan concluded the trials of 56 people held accountable for the violent events in Zhanaozen and Shetpe on December 16-17, 2011. These rulings sent a strong message that all sides that contributed to the escalation of the oil workers’... MORE

On June 4, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev affirmed the new makeup of the government commission for the socio-economic development of the North Caucasus. The commission is comprised of 26 top officials and headed by Medvedev himself. Moscow’s envoy to the North Caucasus, Aleksandr Khloponin, and... MORE

Several Ukrainian people’s deputies had their faces bruised and their shirts torn in a fistfight in parliament on April 24. The opposition caucuses of Our Ukraine and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s bloc (BYT) provoked the brawl in order to disrupt voting on a controversial... MORE