President Viktor Yanukovych on March 7 pompously instructed the Ukrainian government to launch social reforms. The plan boils down to bribing the poorest strata with handouts at a time when the coffers are nearly empty and international creditors want to see less government spending. The... MORE

The latest update of Forbes’ billionaires’ list (www.forbes.com, March 7) raises Bidzina Ivanishvili’s net worth to $6.4 billion, up from the $5.5 billion listed by Forbes and confirmed by Ivanishvili’s office in 2011. The updated figure amounts to more than one half of Georgia’s annual... MORE

This article was originally published in the November 2011 Issue of Militant Leadership Monitor (mlm.jamestown.org). Subscribe to MLM today to receive leading analysis of militant figures like this without delay! After decades of carrying out unspeakable atrocities and thousands of kidnappings in Central Africa, the... MORE

On March 9, a Russian military helicopter was hit by rebels in Dagestan’s Karabudakhkent district, in the vicinity of the village of Gubden. The helicopter’s crew managed to land the aircraft and reportedly avoided casualties. Still, the attack was just the latest indicator of the... MORE

In the first post-election week, the political landscape in Russia has remained distorted and unsettled by expectations of probable aftershocks. Vladimir Putin, who had turned his election campaign into a divisive confrontation, declared that “combat operations” were over and thanked his supporters for his victory... MORE

Presidents Nursultan Nazarbayev and Barack Obama will likely discuss Kazakhstan’s proposal to establish the world’s first international nuclear fuel bank when they meet at the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul in a few weeks. In February, Foreign Minister Yerzhan Kazykhanov (Kazakhstan General Newswire, February 28)... MORE

Security forces in Dagestan launched a special operation in the village of Novosasitli in the republic’s Khasavyurt district on March 7. According to eyewitnesses, about ten military vehicles, including trucks and armored personnel carriers, entered the village and blocked all roads leading in and out... MORE

One of the weaknesses of Belarus’s geopolitical situation and indeed of its self-perception is that Belarus is a crossroads, a land in between. In many ways this cliché informs thinking about Belarus – while something of note is occurring within its borders, there is a... MORE

The North Caucasus is the only part of Russia where the authorities engage in systematic abductions – a practice that has existed since the first war in Chechnya in the mid-1990s. According to the Center for Civil Assistance to the Search for Missing Persons in... MORE

On March 4, Vladimir Putin won a crushing electoral victory and ensured a third six-year term in the Kremlin as Russia’s president. The Central Election Commission (CEC) published the final official results: Putin received 63.6 percent of the popular vote. The Communist leader, Gennadiy Zyuganov,... MORE