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

The 18th Party Congress Work Report outlines policy guidance for the next five years and thus provides a preview of the type of policies that the incoming Xi administration is likely to pursue [1]. The main theme permeating the Work Report centered on solidifying the... MORE

The rightward-shift in China’s politics was institutionalized formally at the highest level on November 15 when Xi Jinping became the new general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Right-leaning leaders dominate the new seven-member Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC). In addition to Xi, they include... MORE

The seizure last week by mutinous Congolese soldiers of the city of Goma in the midst of the mineral rich Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has brought the deaths of hundreds of people and displaced hundreds of thousands of others.... MORE