The internecine squabbling between Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin has left investors puzzled and the U.S. dollar affected. On June 13, Kudrin said at a meeting of the G-8 Finance Ministers in Italy that the global financial system as well... MORE

On June 23, the Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev announced that his government had reached a new agreement with the U.S. government on the status of Manas airbase in Bishkek. According to the president's statement, the U.S. will pay $60 million for renting space at Manas... MORE

On June 24 Georgian television channels played video footage from meetings of radical oppositionists Levan Gachechiladze and Davit Gamkrelidze with the fugitive former internal affairs minister Kakha Targamadze, a wealthy man who resides in Moscow and is believed to be in contact with the Russian... MORE

During the summit between presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev in London on April 1, it was decided in the words of Obama, "to prepare by the end of this year a legally binding and sufficiently bold" new nuclear arms control agreement to replace the... MORE

Russian news agencies reported today that Ingushetia's president, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, who was severely wounded on June 22 when a suicide bomber detonated a car near his motorcade in Nazran, remains in critical condition in a Moscow hospital. Meanwhile, Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov says he has... MORE

President Viktor Yushchenko has strongly condemned the 1944 deportation of Crimean Tatars on many occasions and ordered the Security Service (SBU) to open a special investigative unit examining crimes against humanity committed by the Soviet regime against them. Since the 1998 Ukrainian parliamentary elections, Rukh... MORE

The Russian government has pledged to revive its economic ties with Arab nations. However, Moscow's relations with the Arab world now hardly sound reminiscent of the Soviet-era alliance, as the Kremlin has struggled to cooperate with major Arab energy producers.The Russian first Deputy Prime Minister... MORE

The Russian government is now openly backing Surgut Neftegaz's surreptitious acquisition of a large stake in the Hungarian MOL oil and gas company. The acquisition is legally contested in Hungary. The Russian government's political intrusion nullifies Surgut's thesis that the acquisition was a regular, free-market... MORE

In the latest in an escalating series of attacks in the North Caucasus, a car carrying the president of Ingushetia, Yunus Bek-Yevkurov, was blown up on June 22. An estimated 70 kilograms of explosives detonated as the president's motorcade was passing by in Nazran, the... MORE

In early 2009 a number of European countries suddenly found themselves ensnared by events over which they had little, if any control. Poland and Hungary discovered that gas supply contracts they had signed with the company RosUkrEnergo, 50 percent owned by Gazprom, would not be... MORE