U.S. Vice-President Joseph Biden's imminent visit to Georgia will be watched for indications of an American strategic re-engagement with the Black Sea-South Caucasus region. The Obama administration has not yet defined its policy in this regard and the Vice-President cannot be expected to announce any... MORE

After visiting breakaway South Ossetia on July 13 and Russian troops based deep inside Georgia, President Dmitry Medvedev traveled to Novorossiysk to inspect Russia's main deepwater Black Sea port and nearby military facilities. Medvedev visited the Black Sea fleet flagship cruiser Moskva, attended a meeting... MORE

Memorial has blamed Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov for the murder of Natalya Estemirova, who worked in the Russian human rights group's office Grozny. Estemirova's body was found with bullet wounds to the head and chest near the village of Gazi-Yurt in Ingushetia yesterday just hours... MORE

Since the ethnic riots in Urumqi, the capital of China's northwestern Xinjiang region populated by ethnic Turkic Uighurs, which resulted in the deaths of at least 156 people, including many Uighurs, Sino-Turkish relations have entered a low-level crisis. In the aftermath of the riots, the... MORE

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) completed the second review of its stabilization program for Ukraine on July 10. A visiting IMF delegation recommended that the IMF board grant Ukraine the third $3.3 billion tranche of the $16.4 billion stand-by loan. Kyiv received the previous two... MORE

Top Russian officials are claiming that the security situation in the North Caucasus is improving. News reports from the region, however, paint a different picture. President Dmitry Medvedev told Ingushetia's acting president, Rashid Gaisanov, during a meeting in Sochi yesterday that "the fight with bandits"... MORE

Moscow and Beijing have hailed what they describe as a bilateral strategic partnership, but Russian and Chinese state-run energy companies struggle to agree to a compromise on energy prices. Both sides insisted that the visit by China's President Hu Juntao to Russia on June 16-18... MORE

In line with implementing stricter security policies in Sevastopol and the Crimea, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) is adopting tougher policies towards Russian intelligence activities in the peninsula. These follow the August 2008 decrees restricting the movement of Russian Black Sea Fleet vessels in... MORE

The incendiary idea of abolishing the republics of North Caucasus resurfaces in the Terek Cossacks' demands as a way of dealing with regional problems, but Moscow's constraints still persist. Terek Cossack army's ataman Mikhail Inkavtsov attacked North Caucasus republics, accusing the ethnic republics of being... MORE

July 10 marked fifteen years since Alyaksandr Lukashenka's victory in the second round of the 1994 presidential election in Belarus. Though he has retained power partly by undemocratic means, repressing opponents and monopolizing the media, his success is nonetheless remarkable and worthy of analysis.In the... MORE