As P5+1 members get ready to renew talks with Iran surrounding its much maligned nuclear program, the possibility of a nuclear deal, while still not guaranteed, is still extant. Sources close to the deal have oscillated from initially optimistic, to overtly pessimistic, to somewhere in between, though at the current juncture it appears that both…
Russia announced that nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 powers were moving along steadily, and that some 95% of a final deal had been agreed to, despite the presence of “two or three very difficult issues that remained.” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergi Ryabkov said that the deal is feasible if there is enough…
Newly elected Ukrainian President and former chocolate magnate Petro Poroshenko addressed the UN General Assembly earlier this week. Poroshenko, in a cautionary address directed principally at the United States and the European Union, warned that removing sanctions currently levied against Moscow too quickly could lead to a ramping up of Russian involvement in eastern Ukraine,…
US Administration officials have announced that they expect the long-debated Bilateral Security Agreement, which will allow US forces to remain in Afghanistan after the end of 2014, to be signed by incoming president-elect Ashraf Ghani next week. Officials said the document would be official signed within “days” of his Monday inauguration. The deal allows some…
NATO has announced that a significant portion of Russian troops operating inside of Ukraine have been withdrawn by Moscow, though some troops have remained behind. The withdrawal has struck many as curious given the fact that EU negotiators have not made headway with their Russian counterparts in cease fire negotiations, and Ukrainian and Russian forces…
Opposition activists in Russia have organized peace marches in Moscow and other Russian cities this week, specifically to protest involvement in the Ukrainian civil war. Numbers of protesters were inexact, but BBC reports them to be at “tens of thousands,” and human rights organizations list approximately 50,000. Moscow police, however, report that only 5,000 protesters…
The outcome of the Afghan elections has finally been made clear. Officials in Kabul have announced that the next President of Afghanistan will be Ashraf Ghani, a former finance minister and World Bank official that was heralded as the front-runner during the election run-off held shortly after initial elections terminated inconclusively. The announcement of Ghani…
US Secretary of State John Kerry is urging Former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah to abide by the released audit results, which have not been made public yet. It is speculated by many that these results still show Abdullah losing by a wide margin of votes to his rival, the former Minister of Finance Ashraf Ghani.…
The government of Kazakhstan is looking to two of its neighbors on the Caspian Sea to solve a domestic gasoline crisis. Almaty has entered into talks with Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, two states that are not only rich in oil as is Kazakhstan, but also boasts of stronger infrastructure to develop their natural resources. The Kazakh…
Yesterday, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov announced that a new multi-billion dollar emergency fund would be created to counteract the effects of Western sanctions with a state funded stimulus. The bailout fund will last at least through next year, despite allegations by Russian authorities that sanctions would have little to no effect on the Russian…
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