Kyrgyzstan’s recent peaceful presidential elections did not feature China as a campaign issue. For the most part, they focused on domestic issues and where foreign policy seeped in, it was mostly in the positive light that most Kyrgyz see Russia and separately its regional customs... MORE

Kazakh police in the western Atyrau oblast have arrested three men in connection with two bomb explosions in the downtown area of the city of Atyrau, the “oil capital” of Kazakhstan, on October 31. They have made full confessions, said the Prosecutor-General’s office on Wednesday.... MORE

Dagestan’s Interior Ministry reported today (November 11) that security forces yesterday (November 10) had detained a local resident with an improvised explosive device on the outskirts of the city of Buinaksk. A ministry source was quoted as saying that police unsuccessfully tried to stop a... MORE

Tajikistan has raised tensions with Moscow after a court in Dushanbe convicted a Russian citizen, Vladimir Sadovnichy, sentencing him to serve eight years and six months in prison for smuggling and illegally landing his aircraft on Tajikistan’s Kurgan-Tyube airport last March. While the details of... MORE

The two wars in Chechnya and related political and economic instability were the primary reasons for the massive exodus of both Russian and non-ethnic Russians from the North Caucasus. Even though the flight of ethnic Russians from the region has been extensively explored in scientific... MORE

On November 7, the European parliament in Brussels observed Circassian Day. The event focused on Circassian diaspora organizations, their problems and expectations in relation to the European parliament. In attendance were diaspora groups from European countries, but also substantial Circassian delegations from the United States... MORE

As relations between Dushanbe and Tashkent have become increasingly strained due to multiple factors, including water resources and energy supplies, Tajikistan is trying to end its reliance on Uzbekistan’s highways and railroads. Tashkent has closed most of the Soviet-era highways linking the countries, and Tajikistan’s... MORE

Kazakhstan has been ranked among the top 50 world economies in the Doing Business 2012 report, compiled by the World Bank and its private-sector lender the International Finance Corp (i-news.kz, October 20). The ranking places Kazakhstan 47th among 183 countries in a study assessing business... MORE

Former President Viktor Yushchenko is an important, but underestimated, aspect of the sentencing of opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko to seven years imprisonment and a three year ban from government work. Our Ukraine Honorary Chairman Yushchenko’s support for the sentence was in contradiction with the Our... MORE

Bidzina Ivanishvili, whose confirmed $5.5 billion worth of assets outside Georgia is equal to one half of Georgia’s annual GDP, expatiated on his political plans at his first-ever news conference on November 1. The session followed up Ivanishvili’s October 7 and October 12 program documents,... MORE