On a main thoroughfare in central Bishkek stands a rare type of building in Kyrgyzstan these days: a busy factory. Women hunched over long tables can be seen from the street working late into the evening in boxy rooms under the greenish glow of florescent lights.
Armenia is pressing to terminate a Russian government program that encourages legal labor migration to Russia. But the Russian Federal Migration Service shows no sign of abandoning the initiative.
State Capitalism is weighing down the Russian economy, and there is not much Russian President Vladimir Putin can do to prop up the system, a leading Western expert contends. The trend raises questions about Putin’s ability to maintain his Kung-fu grip on power.
The building that houses the Executive Committee of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s Regional Anti-Terrorism Structure is in a walled compound in the center of the Uzbek capital, Tashkent. I had the good fortune to be among the few Americans invited to take a peek inside.
Authorities in Kyrgyzstan are trumpeting a set of strategic accords to be signed by Moscow and Bishkek this fall as the end to a period of fraught bilateral relations. But observers say the terms are still vague, suggesting mutual wariness as both sides again defer substantive decisions.
Folklore scholar David Hunt has assembled an anthology of stories that present a fascinating side of the Caucasus rarely encountered by diplomats or students of international relations. He also renders a great service with this collection, culled from 19th and 20th century Russian ethnographic archives and field interviews.
It may look like just a 27-year-old radar station in a remote stretch of northern Azerbaijan. But, in reality, Gabala is all about Baku’s desire to assert its own weight as a regional power – even against its onetime patron, Russia.
Although Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan brought his energy minister along on a one-day visit July 18 to Moscow, it’s safe to assume that rather than oil and gas prices, the question of how to resolve the crisis in Syria dominated the discussion between Erdogan and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.
It’s clear that Russia and other authoritarian-minded, formerly Soviet states would like to turn out the lights on the Internet. Given their mood, an annual UN gathering, scheduled to be hosted by Azerbaijan in November, could emerge as a pivotal moment for web's future in Eurasia.
