Russia has announced via Prime Minister Dimitry Medvedev that Kiev will not be allowed to sign any additional natural gas delivery deals from Gazprom, the state gas company, saying that “we won’t extend a transit contract with Ukraine on disadvantageous terms.” The current agreement lasts through 2020, but consistent disagreements and renegotiations on payments have…
Kyrgyzstan has followed through on its threat to cancel a cooperation agreement with the US after the US awarded a human rights prize to Azimzhan Askarov, an activist currently serving a life sentence in Kyrgyz prison. Human Rights Groups have recently demanded Askarov’s release from jail, and the deal had granted US personnel connected with…
Indian PM Narendra Modi is once again breaking down old barriers in foreign policy, this time with Iran. An Indian national security advisor described the accord that was reached with Iran and the P5+1 powers as the “best deal available.” India has been cautiously sending various ministers to Iran for months now, including its national…
Moscow’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov lauded the nuclear deal with Iran, but most Russian analysts and officials were quick to point out that the deal locks in Iran’s return to global oil markets, essentially guaranteeing a price cut at a time of extreme vulnerability for Russian government revenue. The Kremlin chose to stress the positives…
India and Pakistan have gained accession to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) a regional security agreement that originally started between Russia and China. The SCO conference took place after the BRICs meeting in Ufa. The SCO includes Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, and has been actively courting expansion for a long…
On his way to the BRICS conference in Moscow, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a pit stop in Astana, signing 5 agreements with President Nursultan Nazarbayev ranging from defense and terrorism to arranging for the transfer of uranium reserves from Kazakhstan to India. This is the first complete tour of the five post-Soviet “republics”…
As the P5+1 powers and Iran edge closer and closer to a nuclear accord, global oil markets have begun speculating as to how the flow of hydrocarbons will be affected and when sanctions will be released on Iran, which holds the world’s second largest reserves of oil and is additionally among the top 10 richest…
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko unveiled several changes to the Constitution to Parliament on July 1, and has since been barraged by criticism and outright rejection from belligerent separatists still occupying vast swathes of the eastern part of the country. The changes largely amount to a decrease in overall presidential authority, granting local towns the significant…
Another extension on negotiations looks like the most likely outcome for continued nuclear talks between the P5+1 Powers (Germany, Russia, China, the US, France, and Britain) and Iran. With the deadline approaching tonight at 12 am – Iran’s top negotiator Abbas Araqchi reported back to Tehran on Sunday to discuss new terms with Supreme Leader…
The Central Bank of Kazakhstan’s governor, Kairat Kelimbetov, tantalizingly announced once again that it intends to move away from its currency peg to the dollar and move towards what it called an “inflation targeting” method, implying a switch to a floating exchange rate regime. Bloomberg conducted an extensive interview with Kelimbetov where he explicitly stated…
STEPPE DISPATCHES 