With seven CIS member governments in tow, Russia has renewed its campaign to "reform" the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Moscow's two-fold goal is to use OSCE mechanisms in ways that would increase Russian clout on post-Soviet countries and promote "all-European" security arrangements... MORE

Forty-eight percent of Russians polled by the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) have expressed disagreement with the centerpiece of President Vladimir Putin's recently announced plan to centralize political power. Asked whether they agreed with the president's proposal to do away with... MORE

Confirming the growing Russianization of Ukrainian security policy, Defense Minister Yevhen Marchuk was dismissed on September 22. Marchuk had only been appointed to this post in June 2003. His removal resembled that of the pro-Western Foreign Minister Borys Tarasiuk in October 2000. Tarasiuk claims that... MORE

Georgia's draft media law is rapidly becoming a major embarrassment for the Saakashvili government. Ironically, the new legislation, if adopted, would make life much harder for the Georgian media, which was a key player during the Rose Revolution of November 2003. Georgia's new tax code,... MORE

The Pakistani military's six-month hunt for al-Qaeda and Taliban militants along Afghanistan's southeastern border has escalated into new incursions to other areas of the South Waziristan Federally Administered Tribal Area. More ominously, these new offensives are in the territory of the more numerous and better... MORE

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili addressed an audience of prominent businessmen and other distinguished Americans and Europeans at a special event hosted for him by the Jamestown Foundation in New York on September 20. Saakashvili spoke on Georgia's state consolidation, its security problems, and its Euro-Atlantic... MORE

In an apparent attempt to break the strategic deadlock now governing Russia's policies in Georgia and Moldova, some Moscow political pundits advocate a speedy recognition of the secessionist regions of South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Trans-Dniester. To justify such a move, they advise putting the problem... MORE

On September 16, Georgian television broadcast live parliamentary debates on recent events in South Ossetia and how they fit into the broader context of Georgian-Russian relations. The pointed debate suggested that Georgia's political opposition has awakened from its long hibernation following the November 2003 Rose... MORE

As in many post-communist states, Ukrainian authorities control "loyal nationalist" groups. Paradoxically, although presidential front-runner Viktor Yushchenko is regularly assailed as a "nationalist," his Our Ukraine bloc has only one member that is nationalist: the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists. Yet the recent wave of terrorist... MORE

Deputy Prosecutor General Vladimir Kolesnikov announced on September 21 that criminal cases have been launched against three senior police officials in Beslan, North Ossetia, for negligence entailing grave consequences in connection with the school hostage seizure that began on September 1 and ended with deaths... MORE