On February 6, in Geneva, the latest round of Russian-Georgian negotiations on the implementation of the 2011 agreement “About the Basic Principles of the Mechanism of Customs Administration and Monitoring of Trade in Goods” ended without any result (Mid.ru, February 7). The agreement provides for... MORE

Three factors have come together to explain Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s renewal of older Russian plans for the reconstruction of a highway from Chechnya into Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge (Kavkazsky Uzel, Fortanga.org, February 10): Kadyrov’s own desire to show himself as the defender of Chechens living... MORE

Last week (February 2), the influential Russian news and commentary portal IA Rex featured a story headlined, “Kazakhstan Is Seriously Discussing Becoming a Sea Power.” To most readers, the article must have seemed extremely improbable or even to be “fake news” given that Kazakhstan is... MORE

President Vladimir Putin has made Russian development and control of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) one of his top priorities. In his remarks on this topic, Putin has regularly projected enormous growth in the transit of cargo along the NSR on Russian ships in the... MORE

Azerbaijan saw several important events in 2018—both domestic and external and sometimes interlinked. And a major takeaway from contextualizing the past year has been Baku’s cautious optimization of its existing balanced foreign policy. In particular, when looked at together, the events of 2018 suggest that... MORE

Dubai’s ARJ Holdings announced, on December 3, it is investing 100 million euros ($125 million) in the Tallinn–Helsinki tunnel project (Rzd-partner.ru, December 4). This amount represents only a small fraction of what the construction of that 50-kilometer undersea rail tunnel will cost. And yet, because... MORE

In recent months, Russian and Western media outlets have trumpeted what they describe as Russia’s enormous success in developing the Northern Sea Route (NSR), which will shorten the time needed for shipping between East Asia and Europe—particularly now that global warming is lengthening the season... MORE

An official delegation from Uzbekistan, led by Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov, visited Pakistan on November 1–2. Kamilov and his retinue were received by Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan and held meetings with Foreign Minister Mahmood Qureshi as well as the host country’s top military brass.... MORE

On October 15, the European Union adopted a new strategy on connecting Europe and Asia (Consilium.europa.eu, October 15), which became a major theme at the latest Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) summit, held in Brussels on October 18–19 (Consilium.europa.eu, October 19). Under this new connectivity initiative, the... MORE

The president of the Republic of Lithuania, Dalia Grybauskaitė, joined her counterparts from across Central-Eastern Europe to attend a summit of the Three Seas Initiatives (3SI) in Bucharest, Romania, on September 17–18. At this grouping’s latest top-level meeting, the 12 participating leaders from the Baltic,... MORE