Separatists inhabiting Ukraine’s southeastern region of Donetsk plan to hold their own elections, elect a prime minister and allow for a future elected official to appoint his own cabinet. The announcement was made days after the last bastion of separatist, pro-Russia rebels announced their intentions to hold elections that were not “rigged,” as they have…
The Russian state-run media conglomerate Rossiya Sevodnya will be opening local bureaus in over 29 world capitals to expand global media presence in a bid to escalate an ongoing “information war” with the West. Details will apparently be released at an event in Moscow next month, but confirmed locations for the new bureaus include Dushanbe,…
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani arrived in Beijing yesterday to begin meetings with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. The recently inaugurated Ghani’s first official trip abroad as Afghanistan’s leading statesman will consist primarily of talks on the future of relations between the two countries. Ghani has made explicit his desire to strengthen relations with Afghanistan’s eastern…
The new deadline on November 24 for Iran is rapidly approaching, and still large questions about basic elements of the deal are prevalent in the media. Iran has released new statements prohibiting any approval in negotiations on “backward steps,” specifically the enrichment of uranium and number of active centrifuges. The comments were made by Deputy…
Graeme Robertson is currently an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. He received his BA from Oxford University, his MA from Harvard in Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies, and his Ph.D from Columbia University, with work focusing on political protest in Russian politics. His book…
Pro-Western blocs in Ukraine are leading the way with over 22% of the vote in Ukraine’s ongoing parliamentary elections. Competing parties led by Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and current President and former chocolate mogul Petro Poroshenko are leading the with just over 21.65% of the vote each, with all other parties at least seven…
The Summit on the legal status of the Caspian Sea ended at the beginning of October after being held in Astrakhan, Russia. But renewed signs of optimism from convention attendees, released earlier this week, show that the breakthroughs on legal negotiations have taken with the five littoral states. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that…
Chinese investment in Tajikistan over the next three years will be equivalent to nearly two thirds of the Central Asian nation’s total GDP in 2013. Chinese presence in Central Asia has grown in stride with China’s own economic growth, though ties with Tajikistan in particular have strengthened as Beijing sees an opportunity to capitalize on…
Despite over $7.6 billion in expenditures by the United States to prevent opium cultivation in Afghanistan, crop yields have risen to their highest levels during the harvest this year. Cultivation of the poppy is a “significant” source of revenue for local Taliban groups, according to the new report released by the UN Office on Drugs…
Talks surrounding the state of Iran’s nuclear program have resumed in Vienna. Negotiators on both sides predicted the meeting’s success in the days leading up to the meeting, though early indications show that fundamental differences still exist between the two sides. The Iranian Foreign Ministry has alleged that it has accepted Western stipulations that only…
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