On July 18, Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev paid an official visit to Minsk. Medvedev’s visit was somewhat clouded by the July 4 penetration of Belarus’s airspace by a light Swedish plane that took off in Lithuania and dropped 1,000 toy teddy bears carrying human... MORE

On July 25, Kazakhstan’s coastal city of Aktau hosted an expert-level conference on implementing global standards for maritime shipping at Caspian ports (News.az, July 25). Organized by TRACECA’s Logistics Processes and Motorways of the Sea (LOGMOS) project, the conference signals the inauguration of an important... MORE

China has preliminarily agreed to lend more than $7 billion to Ukraine. In addition, an agreement has been signed between the two countries’ central banks on a currency swap worth $2.4 billion. Although it is likely to take months of talks to agree on the... MORE

On July 11, the excavation of the Shahristan tunnel connecting northern and southern Tajikistan was completed. When opened, the 5,253-meter-long tunnel will reduce travel time between Dushanbe and Khujand by two hours (BBC Tajik, July 11). More importantly, the tunnel will make the route safer... MORE

The exact reasons for Uzbekistan’s decision to withdraw from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) at the end of June remain unclear (Xinhua, June, 29; Russia Today, June 28, 2012). However, while Tashkent seems to have soured on the Russian-led regional organization, President Islam Karimov... MORE

Russian and Kazakhstani leaders indicated plans to prioritize multilateral economic ties within the Customs Union and the Common Economic Space (CES). Meanwhile, some of their planned bilateral projects appear to have dropped off the agenda.Russia has continued to extol the growing trade volumes inside regional... MORE

As a small, poor and isolated country, Kyrgyzstan, does not have the luxury of picking its foreign partners. While its leadership continues to look north to Kazakhstan and Russia in determining its geopolitical orientation, and to the West for some semblance of democratic self-affirmation, it... MORE

On June 28, Kazakhstan’s Senate amended the country’s transport regulations partly to allow for the state railways operator, JSC “NC” Kazakhstan Temir Zholy (KTZ), to develop a transport and logistics company, spearheading the country’s transformation into a Eurasian transport hub (Kazinform, June 28). Exactly how... MORE

On June 27-29 in Brussels, Moldovan Prime Minister Vlad Filat wrapped up four agreements between Moldova and the European Union, advancing his country’s European integration process. Filat led a governmental delegation to the high-level annual meeting of the EU-Moldova Cooperation Council. The sectoral agreements just... MORE

On June 19, the first meeting of the new Russian government commission for the socio-economic development of the North Caucasus took place in Grozny, Chechnya. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev presided over the meeting and stated that development of the North Caucasus was “one of the... MORE