On January 27, 2012, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev addressed the people of Kazakhstan with a statement titled “Socio-economic Modernization: the Main Vector of Kazakhstan’s Development.” In what now resembles an American state-of-the-union address, Nazarbayev outlined ten main priorities that will shape the country’s development in... MORE

February 25 will mark the second anniversary of Viktor Yanukovych’s election, during which attitudes toward him and his administration have hardened. But this was not always the case, and views of Yanukovych can be divided into three groups: to order, naïve and realistic.To Order: From... MORE

Tensions between Dagestan’s law enforcement bodies and residents of the village of Gimry in the republic’s Untsulkysky district flared up on February 21. A large group of Gimry residents blocked the Makhachkala-Botlikh highway to protest the kidnapping of a 40-year-old fellow villager, Magomed Gamzatov. The... MORE

The past few weeks in Belarus have seen an unseemly squabble between various sectors of what can loosely be termed as “the opposition.” The reason has been the failure of the Coalition of Six to agree on a strategy for the parliamentary elections, and the... MORE

The start of the large-scale special operation by the police, military and Federal Security Service (FSB) forces launched in Chechnya’s Nozhai-Yurt district on February 13 sent the Russian news agencies into disarray. They reported there were three groups of militants headed by 26-year-old Arslan Mamedov... MORE

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, running for a third presidential term on March 4, has been publishing his election platform bit by bit as lengthy articles in different Moscow daily newspapers. This week it was the government-owned Rossiyskaya Gazeta that carried a 6,500-word text about defense... MORE

A recent amendment to the law on National Intelligence Service (MIT) personnel, requiring the prime minister’s authorization for their trial, seems to have resolved a crisis among Turkey’s security and judicial apparatus for now. However, this solution also raised many more issues than it solved... MORE

On February 18, the first North Caucasus forum of human rights organizations took place in Ingushetia. About 100 participants from other regions of the North Caucasus and Russia took part. In one of the most revealing statements to date, the head of Ingushetia, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov,... MORE

The run-up to this year’s leadership succession has brought more excitement than observers could reasonably expect when the top two presumptive leaders, Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang, seemed set after the 17th Party Congress in 2007. The competition between Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai and... MORE

On the final stretch of the presidential campaign, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin rushes from one region to another demonstrating attention to local needs and asserting his readiness to lead the country for six more years. Governors are competing in staging support rallies and the official... MORE