China is financing the construction of Kyrgyzstan’s first major oil refinery, and excitement is building in Bishkek that the facility could enable the Central Asian nation to break Russia’s fuel-supply monopoly. At the same time, some observers express concern that the project may stoke local resentment, or become enmeshed in political infighting. The refinery in [...]

MOSCOW – During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and, in a milder way, the United States imposed external limits on the activities of states and societies, causing longstanding conflicts among smaller countries to be “frozen.” Following the Soviet Union’s collapse in the 1990’s, those conflicts began to “unfreeze.” With interethnic tensions already on the [...]

This blog is republished here as part of our special holiday selection. Russia is favored by Mongolia and North Korea just as the United States is welcomed by some of its Southeast Asian partners. At the same time, Mongolia and especially North Korea provide opportunities for Russia to raise its stakes in Northeast Asian matters. [...]

Two decades after the demise of the Soviet Union, tensions between Russia and its neighbors remain. Over the past twenty years or so, the former Soviet space has experienced, among others, border disputes and controversies over army exercises, military bases and oil supply routes. However, underlying issues like the withholding of citizenship rights remain largely [...]

MOSCOW – In 1966, Charles de Gaulle’s vision of a Europe “that stretched from the Atlantic to the Urals” was provocative. Today, Russian President Vladimir Putin has advanced an even more ambitious goal: “a common market stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific.” In the race toward globalization, the stakes are high for both Russia [...]