Ukrainian officials will meet today with Russian officials and representatives from state-owned energy giant Gazprom to discuss Russian natural gas supplies to Ukraine. There is no clear timetable for the talks, as quarreling between the two sides has persisted and indications are that myriad issues are still unresolved. Ukrainian Energy Minister Volodymyr Demchyshyn recently stated…
Russia has officially ruled out withdrawing from Crimea and gifting the land back to the Ukrainian state, the Russian Defense Ministry reported today. The statement likely will come as hardly a shock to most observers, and was coupled by a statement reaffirming the claim that the region is one “of the Russian Federation” and “not…
The Collective Security Treaty Organization is an intergovernmental military alliance comprised of six the six members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) – Russia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – and which receives the majority of its financing from Russia. Recently, CTSO Secretary General and Russian general Nikolay Bordyuzha announced the organization’s ability…
A letter sent by 47 US senators to Iranian negotiators has been openly decried by Iran’s chief foreign policy representative. Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, lambasted the letter as lacking in any legal value and as a “propaganda ploy.” Zarif went on to note that the letter is unprecedented in diplomatic history, and a…
A Dushanbe court sentenced leading civil activist Umedjon Solehov to a prison term of 17 years in absentia for “insulting the president,” among other charges. The Ismoili Somoni court handed down the sentenced after Solehov purportedly appeared in a video during a Moscow rally in which he criticized Tajik president Emomali Rahmon and called for his…
The Ukrainian central bank will raise its benchmark refinancing rate to 30%, a more than 10% increase of the current rate of 19.5%. The bank taking this step has been expected, as inflation rates are increasing rapidly and the hryvnia has lost nearly half of its value during 2015. The move by the central bank…
China officially launched a behemoth $79.8 billion infrastructure project in its northwestern province of Gansu. The project, while beginning in Gansu, a region of China that shares no land borders with any Central Asian nation, is merely the starting point for a series of large infrastructure development projects which will encompass much of Central Asia.…
Dr. Alexander Cooley is Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, as well as Deputy Director for Social Sciences Programming at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute. Professor Cooley has researched and written extensively on the impact of external actors on the Former Soviet Union, and is the author of Great Games, Local Rules: The New Great…
The Ukrainian central bank began to severely restrict access to foreign currencies on Wednesday in an attempt to curb a sharp drop in the hryvnia, and then rapidly changed course, lifting the ban on foreign currency purchases. Ukraine’s economy has worsened due to infighting over legislation in the Ukrainian parliament and the related inability to…
We recently had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Bryan Early, founding Director of the Project on International Security, Commerce, and Economic Statecraft (PISCES) at the State University of New York at Albany. Dr. Early is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Public Administration, as well as an expert on economic sanctions, proliferation issues and…
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