One year after the four-day ethnic violence in Osh, the situation on the ground remains stable, but tense. There is no clear explanation yet as to why the conflict had spread and whether it was a predominantly top-down or bottom-up mobilization of violence. Although President... MORE

At a time when protesters are taking down the governments of long-serving authoritarian rulers in Middle Eastern and North African countries, opposition movements in the former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan and Armenia are also taking their struggle to the streets in their respective countries to... MORE

Former Russian army colonel Yury Budanov, who was convicted in 2003 of strangling to death an 18-year-old Chechen girl, Elza Kungaeva, while serving as a tank commander in Chechnya in 2000, was murdered today (June 10) in Moscow. Investigators said the car used by the... MORE

Following the bombing of a mosque located within the walls of the Presidential Palace on June 3, Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh, along with five other ranking government officials who were also injured, was flown to the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh for surgery. [1]... MORE

Ukrainian Prime Minister, Mykola Azarov, looks set to sacrifice the economy for electoral considerations. Azarov is reluctant to meet the key conditions set by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to qualify for the continuation of its $15 billion assistance program: domestic gas price hikes and... MORE

Moscow no longer expects that the situation in the North Caucasus region will improve any time soon. Even the Russian presidential envoy to the North Caucasus Federal District, Aleksandr Khloponin, has been forced to admit on several occasions that one should not expect any positive... MORE

Belarusian President, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, is a man under pressure. Assailed by Western powers for his harsh treatment of former presidential candidates and protestors, he also faces mounting economic problems that have led to the devaluation of the national currency. At the same time, high rates... MORE

On June 4, two masked men from North Ossetia calling themselves “members of the anti-Wahhabi resistance” were shown on the Russian NTV channel. In the interview, which was cited by Regnum news agency but not available on the TV channel’s website, the masked men said... MORE

On June 1, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych fired the deputy prime minister in charge of utilities and construction, Viktor Tikhonov, and his deputy, Yury Khyvrych. The two were dismissed not for the government’s failure to reform the utility sector, which would have been more logical,... MORE

On June 1-2, Russia’s Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights held a conference in Makhachkala, Dagestan. The heated discussions at the conference indicated the enormous explosiveness of the situation in the republic, which is rooted in complex political, social and... MORE