This year Kazakhstan's Journalists Day was marked by a massive protest rally in Almaty on June 24. The rally was unprecedented in scale and united almost all media outlets regardless their political views. The demonstration was organized by the Union of Journalists of Kazakhstan, the... MORE

Russia’s current campaign strategy in Chechnya relies on security agencies and the local government to the region as having a normal, controlled security environment. Russian security structures operating in Chechnya continue to find large weapons caches, making much of the attending publicity to show that... MORE

On June 21 assassinations rocked the city of Khasavyurt, in the North Caucasus republic of Dagestan. Saigidsalim Zabitov, head of the local police organized crime division, was shot dead together with Shamsudin Kachakaev, a policeman who was accompanying him. Rebels ambushed their car late at... MORE

This week two Georgian newspaper articles stood out from the typical reports about current events. One was about the sanity of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, and the other was about his plans to reshuffle the cabinet once again. On Monday, June 26, Khronika published a... MORE

Minister of Foreign Affairs Borys Tarasyuk’s June 26-27 visit to Moldova was the first visit abroad by a senior Ukrainian official since the formation of the parliamentary coalition and designation of a prime minister in the person of Yulia Tymoshenko (June 22). His discussions with... MORE

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine bloc, the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, and the Socialist Party (SPU) have agreed to revive the Orange Revolution government coalition that existed until September 2005, when Yushchenko fired Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. The news of an accord among the three... MORE

As the United States and Belarus continue their war of words, accompanied by freezing the actual or imagined assets of each other's leading government figures, Minsk played host to a series of summits. At the same time, Belarus and Russia carried out the largest-ever joint... MORE

Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia, Alexander Lukashenka of Belarus, Robert Kocharian of Armenia, Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, Kurmanbek Bakiyev of Kyrgyzstan, Imomali Rahmonov of Tajikistan, and Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan met on June 23 in Minsk for a dual summit of the Collective Security Treaty... MORE

Armenia’s leadership has indicated its discontent with the Russian authorities’ failure to stop racially motivated attacks on non-Slavic immigrants in Russia. Such attacks have claimed at least six Armenian lives this year. Faced with domestic outcry against its reluctance to publicly exert pressure on Moscow,... MORE

Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev has placed Caspian security high on his agenda, not only as a means of promoting foreign assistance programs but also in generating further help from Moscow. On June 21 a three-day joint special exercise involving Kazakhstan and Russia, ended in the... MORE