It appeared too great a temptation to pass up for the Kremlin when Greece’s impending default and exit from the Eurozone or even the European Union (the so-called Grexit) occurred simultaneously with the annual BRICS summit, this time under Russian leadership, in Ufa, on July... MORE

In a surprising turn of events, on July 8, the Russian state-run natural gas monopoly Gazprom canceled a contract with the Italian oil and gas services group Saipem. The two companies were supposed to jointly build the first line of Turkish Stream, the Moscow-backed pipeline... MORE

On July 1, President Petro Poroshenko made public the draft amendments to Ukraine’s Constitution, regarding decentralization of the country’s administrative-territorial system (Kyiv Post, July 1). The amendments redefine the relationship between Ukraine’s central government and the administrative-territorial units on three levels (province, district, community), devolving... MORE

More than three months of intense aerial bombardment by Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners have left much of Yemen in ruins. Few places in the country are not experiencing the effects of the air campaign, civil war and the deprivations caused by the coalition’s... MORE

On June 15, the ongoing Pakistan Army operation “Operation Zarb-e-Azb” (Sharp Strike) completed its first year. The military operation is the first of its kind against the Islamist insurgents based in the North Waziristan district of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. However,... MORE

On June 14, the Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen militant group (better known as al-Shabaab) launched a major attack on a Kenya Defense Force (KDF) camp in Lamu County. The attack failed badly and exposed the militant group’s weak military capabilities. However, it also confirmed the group’s... MORE

In the Russian-occupied Georgian region of Abkhazia, the last couple weeks of June 2015 were dominated by news of an unusual spat between the typically submissive Abkhazian separatists, on the one hand, and their Russian patrons, on the other. The disagreement between the two sides... MORE

A law banning foreign and international non-governmental organizations (NGO) as “undesirable” in Russia was approved by both houses of parliament and signed by President Vladimir Putin last May. A specific list of “undesirables” is currently being prepared in Moscow, and it may include The Jamestown... MORE

The Belarusian parliament endorsed a new date for the upcoming presidential elections: October 11. It is unlikely that shifting elections from November (as originally planned) to October will make a difference either in terms of negative trends in the economy or in terms of the... MORE

On June 22, the World Bank approved $12 million in additional financing for Tajikistan for a project creating temporary employment in rural districts (clearing irrigation and drainage canals). This financing is a specific effort to assist the country in tackling the impact of falling remittances... MORE