Facing a stalemate in its negotiations with Russia, Belarus unilaterally increased by 50 percent its tariff on the transit of Russian crude oil beginning on October 11. This is clearly a partial antidote to the lingering lack of bilateral agreement on the price of Russian... MORE

Belarus’s current economic situation is a cause for concern. The decline in GDP by the end of 2016 will amount to 3 percent. Between January and August, the country led the entire Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) on inflation: retail prices have grown by 7.6... MORE

On September 30, trading on the Moscow Exchange pushed up the Russian ruble to 62.81 per US dollar, its highest recorded value for the current year (RT, October 3), marking a 31 percent appreciation versus the greenback since end of January 2016. The move reflected,... MORE

October 2016 marks the centennial of the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railroad (Trans-Sib), Russia and the world’s longest railroad line. Yet, no special celebrations are planned—in part due to Russia’s current economic difficulties, but also because that fabled railroad may be reaching the end of... MORE

With Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyaev settling into Uzbekistan’s top spot as interim head of state following the death of President Islam Karimov (see EDM, September 8), questions have been mounting about the new leader’s background and what Mirziyaev-era Uzbekistan will look like. According to forecasts,... MORE

A snap inspection in late August, involving three military districts and the Northern Fleet, as well as the subsequent strategic exercise Kavkaz 2016, held in southwestern Russia on September 5–10 (see EDM, September 8, 13, 14, 15, 20), together seem to indicate a turning point... MORE

In recent years, there has been no shortage of bad blood between Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka and the Russian Kremlin. For example, in February 2004, Lukashenka referred to the stoppage of Russian natural gas flows into Belarus, in retaliation for Belarus’s insistence on lower prices,... MORE

On September 13, First Deputy Prime Minister of the Georgian government and Minister of the Economy and Sustainable Development Dimitry Kumsishvili stated at a press conference that Tbilisi and Beijing had finalized a free trade agreement between their two countries. “China’s Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng... MORE

Antonov, Ukraine’s only designer and manufacturer of aircraft, has severed all ties with Russia, which had been its main market and partner for decades (Ukrayinska Pravda, September 10). This was unavoidable, given the de facto war waged by Moscow, which prompted Kyiv to stop Ukrainian... MORE

Since 1991, the influence of the Russian Federation in Central Asia has been on the decline, and many have assumed that the United States would move in to fill the resulting vacuum. US influence has indeed increased, at least in certain countries of that strategically... MORE