On May 29, the third Chuulhn Congress convened in Elista, the capital of the Republic of Kalmykia, in southwestern Russia. Nearly two hundred ethnic Kalmyks from the republic, as well as Moscow and Mongolia, took part in the assembly of this highest representative body of... MORE

On July 29, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka appointed Mikhail Kostechko to serve as the new general director of the country’s main oil products trader, Belorusskaya Neftyanaya Kompaniya (BNK), and ordered him to maintain foreign market share regardless of the activity of the “Western scumbags” (President.gov.by,... MORE

On July 29, Charles Michel, the president of the European Council (the main policy-setting body of the European Union), released a statement in response to the unexpected decision of the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party to annul the accord of April 19, 2021 (Interpressnews, July... MORE

The collapse of a single short river crossing on the Trans-Siberian Railroad 300 kilometers from Chita, in late July, and President Vladimir Putin’s immediate decision to convene a meeting of the Russian Security Council to decide how to correct the situation highlight both the serious... MORE

The remarks by United States President Joseph Biden at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence last week (July 27) made a strong but ambivalent impression in Moscow. His warning regarding Russian misinformation and interference in the 2022 mid-term elections in the US was... MORE

Introduction The People’s Republic of China (PRC) recently published its seventh national ten-year 2020 Census results, which led to much discussion and commentary about the development implications of low population growth and a rapidly aging population (e.g., China Brief, May 21). Fewer have noted insights... MORE

Turkmenistan’s longstanding neutrality has kept it out of Russian regional security arrangements like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which has constrained the level of influence Moscow could have in this notoriously insular Central Asian republic. But now, China... MORE

On July 19, Russia’s Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin stated that the deputy ministers in his cabinet will each oversee one of the country’s eight Federal Districts. These subnational macro units are comprised, on average, of a dozen neighboring federal subjects (republics, oblasts, krais, etc.) in... MORE

On July 6, Kazakhstan celebrated Capital City Day in commemoration of former president Nursultan Nazarbayev’s 1994 decision to move the capital from Almaty in the south to Akmola in the north. The capital was subsequently renamed Astana but, following Nazarbayev’s sudden resignation, it has been... MORE

The sudden collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), in December 1991, and fracturing into 15 independent states effectively destroyed its unified, centrally planned, autarkic economy. The massive former Soviet defense sector was particularly hard-hit; during the 1990s, it scrambled to cope with... MORE