The Crimean referendum election on Russian annexation took place yesterday. With more than 50% of the vote accounted for, exit polls demonstrate that an overwhelming majority (close to 95%) of Crimeans supports the secession from Ukraine, as reported by the head of referendum committee Mikhail Malishev However, instead of defusing tensions, the referendum has merely…
Negotiations on the CASA-1000 Power Supply Program have continued today in Istanbul. The proposed transmission project will transmit 1300 MW of surplus electricity from existing hydroelectric power sources in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan through Afghanistan to power-starved end markets in Pakistan and India. Details over the Power Purchase agreement are still being hotly debated, especially as…
More than 6,000 Russian forces flowed into the Ukrainian region of Crimea on Saturday, generating strong fervent criticism from Western powers and placing Ukraine in an uncertain situation. The maneuvers engaged in by the Russian forces began Friday with the arrival of armed men to the southeastern Ukrainian region, but the incursion into Ukrainian territory…
Ongoing violence in Independence Square, or Maidan, in Kiev, Ukraine, has claimed the lives of more than 50 Ukrainian protestors and seen hundreds more injured. The rapid escalation in aggression impetuously put an end to a short-lived truce brokered between the Ukrainian government and opposition party leaders. Though the principal catalyzing factor remains unknown, both…
The former Soviet Republics of Central Asia have long been a highway for the lucrative drug trade, but in recent years the routes out of the so-called Golden Crescent have been swelling with increasing traffic of opium grown in Afghanistan. Despite many efforts over the years by both Afghan and American central planners in Kabul,…
Thousands of members of India’s Armed Forces were deployed throughout Kashmir, a region in northwestern India, on the anniversary of the execution of Afzal Guru, a prominent Indian nationalist as well as the alleged mastermind behind attacks carried out against the Indian Parliament in December of 2001. Authorities are said to have instituted a curfew…
The Pentagon announced that Manas Air Force base, located in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan will be closing in the next six months, with plans for total vacation of the premises by July 11, 2014. The transit center is the central hub of the supply lines going in and out of Afghanistan to support Operation Enduring Freedom. The…
STEPPE DISPATCHES 