Pakistani National Security Advisor Sartag Aziz paid a short visit to new Afghan President Ashraf Ghani over the weekend, with future meetings set up between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Ghani forthcoming, an apparent sign of detente. A formal invitation was extended from Sharif to Ghani to arrange a meeting to ‘share his vision’ for…
NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe Philip Breedlove told reporters on the sidelines of a conference in Greece that the alliance would welcome the withdrawal of Russian troops from the Donetsk region of Ukraine, but that no “major improvements” have been seen. Despite this proclamation, this past Saturday Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered 17,600 troops…
Negotiations concerning the state of Iran’s nuclear program will resume this Thursday in Vienna. Ministers on both sides are expected to trifle little while attempting to quickly reach an agreement with the Gulf nation by the 24th of November. The two sides have throughout the process expressed an ever-fluctuating combination of cautious optimism and full-fledged…
Uzbek Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyaev announced that roughly $1 billion worth of textile products have been shipped this year and that sales are expected to increase, making Uzbekistan the world’s fifth largest producer of cotton. Some 3.3 million tons of cotton were produced last year, but Western powers like the United States have been adamant…
The sale of Morgan Stanley’s oil trading and storage businesses to state-owned Russian energy giant Rosneft appears to be in jeopardy following statements released by Morgan Stanley representatives. The transaction, which was brokered last year by the two sides and submitted for approval in July, has recently been hamstrung by the current state of economic…
Russia’s Central Bank has again been forced to intervene in the Russian economy. The latest intervention, which totals over $1.8 billion USD, brings the total amount of funds spent by the Russian CB up to nearly $55 billion this year alone. The fact that Russian intervention into its own economy began prior to the levying…
As inflation rises out of control in Russia thanks to the astonishing 17% decline in the value of the ruble against the dollar, coupled with the drop in the price of oil and infusions of capital by the Russian Central Bank, the Russian economy has certainly seen better days. Russia originally aimed at the beginning…
An already shaky Russian economy has been made worse by plummeting oil prices that could cause the Russian economy to recess by 1.2%. Sberbank CIB, Russia’s most important lender, estimates that if the price of crude remains around $90 per barrel that it will shrink, and additional estimates show that if the price of crude…
On Monday, the Kazakh government announced its intention to sell 10-year and 30-year bonds in US dollars to international investors after more than 14 years of absence from allowing public investment in government debt. Intended to avoid an expensive and potentially politically divisive battle over debt restructuring (such as the one in Argentina in 2001…
Kazakhstan appears poised to reclaim its place among the world’s leading gas and oil producers in the coming years. Kazakh Deputy Energy Minister Magzum Mirzagaliyev recently announced that Kazakhstan’s long-awaited Kashagan oil field will resume crude oil production during the second half of 2016. The supergiant (>10 billion barrels) which became operational in 2013 but…
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