The recent discovery that former Kyrgyzstani President Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s brother Janysh is also living in Minsk sparked furious exchanges between Kyrgyzstan and Belarus, with the latter country refusing a request to extradite him to face charges of murder. Belarus maintains, officially at least, that the... MORE

On August 21, Romania’s Constitutional Court invalidated the July 29 national referendum on the question of removing President Traian Basescu from office. The referendum had fallen short of the constitutional quorum requirement (50 percent plus one vote of all eligible voters). On August 28, Basescu... MORE

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s talk at the Russian Foreign Ministry on September 3, when he powerfully stressed the need for his country to strengthen and consolidate its “soft power” (mid.ru, September 3), may look to an outside observer like an optimistic signal and a long-awaited... MORE

When Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Cai Yingting spoke with the Chinese media during his visit to Washington in August, he emphasized the importance of building “a new type of military-to-military relationship with the United States” (China Daily,... MORE

At time when leaders in China and Japan were expecting to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the normalization of relations between the two states with a series of celebrations across both countries, instead leaders in both states are working to contain the latest nationalist flare-ups... MORE

The late patriarch Deng Xiaoping said famously about U.S.-China relations: “There are limits as to how good—or how bad—Sino-U.S. ties can become.” Can the same be said for China and Japan? While relations between the two most powerful Asian countries have apparently been heading toward... MORE

On August 28–29, Astana hosted an international conference at Independence Palace called “From a Nuclear Test Ban to a Nuclear Weapons-Free World.” According to Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, more than 200 participants from more than 75 countries joined representatives from some two dozen international... MORE

ANGOLA Operation Shows China Testing Overseas Security Role On August 25, officials from the Chinese Ministry of Public Security (MPS) escorted 37 suspects back to China for violent crimes—including human trafficking, kidnapping, robbery and blackmail—against Chinese émigrés in Angola. The MPS made the arrests in... MORE

Two top personnel changes have taken place in Minsk. The longest-serving Belarusian foreign minister, Sergei Martynov (in charge from March 2003 to August 20, 2012) was replaced by Vladimir Makei, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s now ex-chief of staff, whose position was assigned to Andrei Kobiakov, until... MORE

Visiting Moldova on August 22 (see accompanying article), German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared twice unambiguously that Moldova does have a “European perspective”—albeit in a “step-by-step process”; and “we shall accompany you along this path” (www.bundeskanzlerin.de, August 22, 23). Potentially, this opens the possibility of Moldova’s... MORE