One of the closest associates of Georgia’s Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, State Minister for Reintegration Paata Zakareishvili, has unveiled the government’s idea to unblock the railway link that connected Russia with the South Caucasus republics in Soviet times.In an interview with the Moscow paper Kommersant... MORE

On October 15, Baku hosted the 12th summit of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO). The presidents of Azerbaijan, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan, as well as the prime minister of Turkey attended the event. ECO was established in 1985 as a regional, inter-state economic organization... MORE

The latest World Bank (WB)/International Finance Corporation (IFC) Doing Business 2013 (DB) report reveals remarkable progress achieved by Kazakhstan in creating a business-friendly environment: it ranks 49th out of 185 countries surveyed. Especially impressive is the country’s improvement in one of the key indicators—ease of... MORE

On October 22, about 450 villagers threatened to destroy the offices of the Chinese company Zijin Mining Group in the village of Orlovka in northern Chui province in Kyrgyzstan. The attack occurred after a villager’s horse was killed by a staff member of the company.... MORE

On October 27, Tajikistan’s President Emomalii Rahmon formally inaugurated the Shahriston tunnel along the Dushanbe-Khujand highway (BBC Tajik, October 27). The 5,253-meter tunnel cuts the time required to drive between the capital of Dushanbe and Tajikistan’s second-largest city, Khujand (Leninabad), from eight to less than... MORE

Earlier in October, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin traveled to India to complete discussions ahead of President Vladimir Putin’s planned trip there and to negotiate nuclear and arms deals. Perhaps not surprisingly, given Rogozin’s charm as a diplomat, Putin’s trip was postponed and overt... MORE

Chechens suddenly learned from the Russian media that the authorities in Moscow were preparing to axe the federal program on socio-economic development of the Chechen Republic in 2008–2012. Chechnya was destined to receive about $3 billion through this program (https://regions.ru/news/2429193/). However, Moscow has proposed replacing... MORE

On the day preceding Nursultan Nazarbayev’s latest visit to Moscow (see EDM, October 19), the widely-read Russian daily newspaper Izvestia published an interview previously obtained from an unidentified high-level official of the Russian Space Agency (Roskosmos). In his conversation with journalists, the official claimed that... MORE

In August 2011, Russia signed what appeared to be a momentous agreement with North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea—DPRK), an accord that marked Kim Jong Il’s last great foreign policy accomplishment. North Korea’s Supreme Leader’s last major foreign policy initiative was the August summit... MORE

On October 10–11, Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev conducted an official visit to Turkey, which focused on deepening economic ties between these already strong partners. The main event was the first meeting of the High Level Strategic Cooperation Council, which was established after Prime Minister Recep... MORE