China continues to make progress in building its Eurasian transportation networks with the aim of deepening its economic ties in Central and South Asia as well as providing a foundation for its regional security interests. Gwadar, a port town in western Pakistan close to Iran... MORE

On April 3, Kyrgyzstan’s President Almazbek Atambayev made a speech before the students of the Kyrgyz State Technical University in Bishkek. While he addressed a number of issues related to both the domestic and foreign politics of the Central Asian republic, Atambayev particularly stressed the... MORE

The Russian government, the expert community in Moscow and the national economic elite are actively discussing the economic future of the nation and possible drastic financial policy changes as the economy slumps into potentially long-term stagflation, which may fundamentally destabilize the regime. The elite’s discord... MORE

Dagestani billionaire Suleiman Kerimov is set to leave the Federation Council, the upper chamber of the Russian parliament, according to a report published in the newspaper Izvestia on March 29. Kerimov is among the wealthiest Dagestanis close to the Russian government. The parliament’s lower house,... MORE

The drawdown of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) combat forces from Afghanistan by 2014 will limit the future potential of the Northern Distribution Network (NDN). Moreover, the withdrawal has left defense planning staffs among International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) members trying to resolve the conundrum... MORE

Recent events around Belarus draw attention to a chasm between the Belarusian policies pursued by Russia and by the West. This month, Russia agreed to retain an unprecedented scale of duty-free oil deliveries to Belarus. Under the current deal, Russia exports crude oil to Belarus,... MORE

On March 7, Kazakhstan’s parliament ratified the bilateral agreement with Russia on the duty-free import of Russian oil into Kazakhstani territory. The initial agreement on Kazakhstani-Russian cooperation in the field of energy was signed back in December 2010, but it did not exempt hydrocarbon supplies... MORE

In the next five years, China will implement a series of transformative public sector reforms due to the convergence of several factors over the past year that have made China ripe for change. Most obvious among them is the fact that the party leadership chosen... MORE

For 20 out of the 22 years of Ukraine’s independence (with the exception of the period 2009–2010), the country’s domestic energy market has been dominated by opaque gas intermediaries. Gazprom’s Itera and Yulia Tymoshenko’s United Energy Systems of Ukraine operated during the first decade of... MORE

On March 22 in Copenhagen, the Danish and Turkish prime ministers, Helle Thorning-Schmidt and Recep Tayyp Erdogan, witnessed the signing of agreements between subsidiaries of Danish Moeller-Maersk and Azerbaijan’s State Oil Company (SOCAR) to develop a giant port near Izmir in Turkey. The petrochemicals holding... MORE