29 April 2010

"The main question for the next few years is whether the Kharkiv agreements will become a tool of stabilization, development and rapprochement of Ukraine and Russia", Irina Kobrinskaya.

22 April 2010

Tashkent said again that Uzbekistan-Russia relations are strategic, and that Russia plays a key role in ensuring global and especially regional security and stability in Central Asia.

13 April 2010

Recent statements by Russian Defense Minister, Anatoliy Serdyukov, indicate that the experiment with contract personnel in the armed forces has finally failed. Serdyukov outlined some of the reasons for these failings, ranging from low pay to how they were recruited and noted the problem of retention.

09 April 2010

The bloody and chaotic overthrow of the Bakiev regime is not good news for anybody. For Western liberals, it merely highlights the sorry conditions in Kyrgyzstan, the one country in Central Asia that had tried to follow Western advice about the benefits of democratization, market reform and free trade.

07 April 2010

The developments in Kyrgyzstan are claiming much of our attention. We're still receiving controversial reports and updates from Kyrgyzstan. Many of us are grappling with similar questions: What's happening in Kyrgyzstan? Are we talking about another Tulip revolution? How are the current protests similar or different from the Tulip revolution? So what are broader patterns here?

06 April 2010

The meeting of Belarus-Russia Union Counsel of Ministers, which was held in the Belarusian city of Brest on March 16, surprised nobody and was a routine event. Belarusian President Aliaksandr Lukashenka was absent, so at the press-conference after the meeting it was Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin who looked like the host, while his Belarusian counterpart Siarhiej Sidorski resembled a guest.

01 April 2010

What follows is a long and updated version of a submitted letter, which was edited and run by The Moscow Times (TMT) on March 18. This is stated with the realization of how news organizations are known for shortening letters for space consideration. With this understanding, I have no objection to how TMT edited my letter. At the same time, there is more to be substantively said about the involved topics. 

29 March 2010

The Chinese energy companies gained a foothold in the world market. They have interests even in such poor and remote countries, as Sudan. While in 1990-2000s China National Petroleum Corporation was China’s “flagship”, in the late 2000s the situation changed slightly.

22 March 2010

Recovering from the financial and economic crisis, the Kazakh authorities are going to develop the country’s regions. Nursultan Nazarbayev, President of Kazakhstan, spoke about that in his Annual Address to the Kazakh people in 2010.

09 March 2010

As a consequence of Defense Minister Anatoliy Serdyukov’s military reform, the Russian officer corps is arguably enduring the most fundamental changes and challenges that it has faced in the past two centuries.

05 March 2010

It was clear even before the elections that the Tajikistani authorities could not achieve their main object from those elections – to improve Tajikistan’s image on the international scene.

17 February 2010

The problems in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan relations could be solved if the sides were ready to make a compromise with each other. If Emomalii Rahmon and Islom Karimov made any concessions to each other, it would ease tension between the neighbouring countries.

09 February 2010

Both Tymoshenko and Yanukovych are backed by almighty oligarchic clans, whose interests they are supposed to meet. So will the new president be willing and able to break out the preset paradigm and finally initiate the long-awaited reforms, which would inevitably come into conflict with the oligarchic interests?

08 February 2010

The narrow gap shows that it will be difficult for Viktor Yanukovych to seize power and that the two presidential candidates should negotiate with each other.

08 February 2010

In December 2009, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, President of Kyrgyzstan, launched the constitutional reform. The official reason is the constitutional amendments are needed to define the powers of the President, the Parliament and the Cabinet, considering the administrative reform in Kyrgyzstan.

19 January 2010

In the January 17 elections Yuliya Tymoshenko made three system mistakes. Firstly, as I have already said, the exit poll with the results in the interests of Yuliya Tymoshenko was made. She cannot use this technology in the second round, as no one would believe “her” sociologists.

18 January 2010

For Kazakhstan the year 2010 started not only with festivities in honour of its OSCE presidency, but also with the necessity to solve serious diplomatic issues.

15 January 2010

Viktor Yanukovych and Yuliya Tymoshenko are the leaders of the presidential election campaign. There continues to be a 10-15% gap between their approval ratings. Serhyi Tigipko ranks third. The gap between his approval rating and that of Yuliya Tymoshenko is 10%.

14 January 2010

The customs duty on the Russian oil for Minsk is the issue of the Belarusian regime’s survival. That’s why Minsk reacts so sharply to Moscow’s unwillingness to supply over 5 million tons of oil without charging the duty.

25 December 2009

The presidential election campaign in Ukraine has two main intrigues, if anything extraordinary does not happen in the New Year and Christmas holidays. The first one is a very wide gap between approval ratings of the leaders of the presidential race, Viktor Yanukovych and Yuliya Tymoshenko.