On June 23, the Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev announced that his government had reached a new agreement with the U.S. government on the status of Manas airbase in Bishkek. According to the president's statement, the U.S. will pay $60 million for renting space at Manas... MORE

On June 24 Georgian television channels played video footage from meetings of radical oppositionists Levan Gachechiladze and Davit Gamkrelidze with the fugitive former internal affairs minister Kakha Targamadze, a wealthy man who resides in Moscow and is believed to be in contact with the Russian... MORE

Russian news agencies reported today that Ingushetia's president, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, who was severely wounded on June 22 when a suicide bomber detonated a car near his motorcade in Nazran, remains in critical condition in a Moscow hospital. Meanwhile, Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov says he has... MORE

While the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) must have heaved a sigh of relief over the relatively uneventful 20th anniversary of the June 4, 1989 crackdown, central party authorities are adopting extra measures to defuse tension between local officials and the masses. Widespread anger at the... MORE

President Viktor Yushchenko has strongly condemned the 1944 deportation of Crimean Tatars on many occasions and ordered the Security Service (SBU) to open a special investigative unit examining crimes against humanity committed by the Soviet regime against them. Since the 1998 Ukrainian parliamentary elections, Rukh... MORE

On June 12, the liberal left Taraf daily published an unclassified document outlining an alleged action plan for the military to combat the "reactionary activities" against secularism. Allegedly the "Action Plan against Reactionaries (Irtica)," was prepared by senior staff Colonel Dursun Cicek and defines the... MORE

On June 17, following the CSTO and SCO summits, Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev sacked the country's first civilian Defense Minister Daniyal Akhmetov. The presidential press service refused to comment on the reasons for the dismissal, while confirming that the former defense minister and chairman of... MORE

On June 22 Ukrainian Naval Headquarters confirmed unofficially that the country's political deadlock has doomed the multinational military exercise Sea Breeze-2009. According to the Ukrainian headquarters sources, the U.S. Armed Forces European Command (EUCOM) and the U.S. Sixth Fleet notified Ukraine's defense ministry on June... MORE

Exercising his interim powers under the constitution, Moldova's outgoing president Vladimir Voronin has dissolved the parliament that was elected on April 5 and has called new parliamentary elections for July 29. Voronin's decree, issued on June 15, had become unavoidable after the opposition twice boycotted... MORE

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed a revised anti-crisis program for 2009 last week, asserting that the previous plan had been accomplished and setting the first priority on the fulfillment of the state's social obligations for the population and the second - on preserving and developing... MORE