On December 19, ten candidates will contest the Belarusian presidency. The election has been notably open, with several opposition candidates reaching out for support from Moscow, and the European Union offering encouragement to the incumbent president conditional on some basic requirements for a democratic process.... MORE

The prospects for resolving the Karabakh conflict are as uncertain as ever after the inability of Armenia and Azerbaijan’s presidents to reach any tangible agreements on the margins of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) summit in Astana on December 1-2. It... MORE

Despite the statements from the NATO Lisbon summit about partnership with Russia, it did not take long for Moscow to demonstrate why partnership with it is so difficult, as well as revealing why there is little East-West trust. On November 30, RIA Novosti rebuffed a... MORE

On December 14 in Minsk, Belarusian President, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, received a small group of US analysts for a discussion on US-Belarus relations. The group, drawn from several Washington think-tanks, visited Belarus at its own initiative, from a variety of policy and professional interests. Lukashenka’s unprecedented... MORE

International attention focused on Astana on December 1-2, where the leaders of the 56 member-countries gathered for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) summit, billed by the Kazakh government as an “epoch-making event.” Kazakhstan ended its chairmanship of the organization in a... MORE

The decision by FIFA to grant Russia the right to host the 2018 Football World Cup was met with enthusiasm within the country and with sobering comments around the world (EDM, December 6). Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, a driving force behind Russia’s effort to host... MORE

On December 11 in Ashgabat, the top officials of four participant countries signed agreements on a Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline project, favored on and off (currently on again) by the US government. Presidents Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai, and Pakistan’s Asif Ali Zardari,... MORE

When the Helsinki Final Act was adopted in 1975 to reduce tensions between East and West during the Cold War, few believed in its potential to transform the international security architecture by way of advancing border stability and human rights. Yet, the Helsinki Final Act... MORE

Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, has completed an unprecedented foreign policy marathon that started on October 19, with the a trilateral meeting in Deauville with French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, and German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, followed by the summits of the G20, Organization for Security and Cooperation... MORE

Turkey’s recent humanitarian aid to Israel renewed the debate on how to normalize Turkish-Israeli relations, which have been in limbo since the flotilla incident in May 2010. Turkey has argued that Israel should acknowledge full responsibility for its raid on the humanitarian aid flotilla, which... MORE