On December 4, Kazakhstan’s parliament and the Kazakhstan Institute of Strategic Studies held a joint conference on the future of Central Asia–Afghanistan relations. This conference was attended by representatives of Russia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, including diplomats, researchers and political experts, as well as the deputy... MORE

The notion of “re-Sovietization” has been on the lips of many Russia-watchers, and now US State Secretary Hillary Clinton has spelled it out after a rather disappointing meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (Rossiiskaya Gazeta, December 7). Russian foreign policy slipped into confusion during... MORE

According to the newspaper Izvestia, Kyrgyzstan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs requested that Russia provide the small Central Asian republic with direct assistance in the form of arms and technical support. Kyrgyzstan’s internal affairs ministry, which controls the country’s police forces, seeks from Russia two helicopters,... MORE

In recent months, Kazakhstan and Georgia have joined with Azerbaijan and Turkey to make considerable progress in their Silk Wind Project, which aims to construct a high-speed, multimodal container transportation system for freight shipments between the countries of Europe, the Caucasus and Asia. According to... MORE

The end of November was packed with events for the head of the small North Caucasusian republic of Ingushetia. On November 22–23, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov visited Kazakhstan, where he met people from the local Ingush diaspora. The Ingush diaspora came to existence in Kazakhstan following the... MORE

On December 2, over 100 people held a rally in downtown Moscow in support of Syria’s Circassians. The participants called on the Russian government to intervene and allow the estimated 100,000 ethnic Circassians who live in Syria to repatriate to the Russian North Caucasus. The... MORE

On November 29, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, in response to the new Georgian government’s attempts to normalize ties with Russia, declared that Moscow was ready for dialogue with Tbilisi. However, the talks would progress on the condition that Georgia takes into consideration new geopolitical... MORE

On November 15, Head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov began his two-day visit to Baku. This was the second visit of the Chechen leader to Baku in the last couple of years. Despite the fact that Kadyrov faces heavy criticism in Europe and the United States... MORE

The regional tensions precipitated by China’s demand to incorporate virtually all of the South China Sea into its territorial waters are well known and acute. China has previously warned the United States to leave the region and not interfere in China’s “core interests.” What is... MORE

While the initial testing of China’s first aircraft carrier has garnered headlines around the globe, comparatively less attention has been focused on a potentially significant new exercise of Chinese maritime might—that of its civil maritime agencies. Within that domain, a somewhat unusual maritime exercise took... MORE