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Visegrad: A New European Military Force

By George Friedman

With the Palestinians demonstrating and the International Monetary Fund in turmoil, it would seem odd to focus this week on something called the Visegrad Group. But this is not a frivolous choice. What the Visegrad Group decided to do last week will, I think, resonate for years, long after the alleged attempted rape by Dominique Strauss-Kahn is forgotten and long before the Israeli-Palestinian issue is resolved. The obscurity of the decision to most people outside the region should not be allowed to obscure its importance. READ MORE

Azerbaijan and Armenia Meet to End Land Dispute

By Ellen Barry

The foreign ministers of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Russia met behind closed doors here on Saturday, as international mediators ratcheted up the pressure for a breakthrough in the long conflict over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. READ MORE

NATO rejects Russian missile-defense proposal

By Stephen Levy

NATO’s senior leader on Tuesday rejected a Russian government proposal that would have required the European alliance to share details on a continentwide missile-defense system. READ MORE

The CSTO Seeks Stronger Security Arrangements

By Sergei Blagov

The Russian-led security alliance, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, has pledged to face security challenges in Central Asia by boosting military cooperation. READ MORE

Serbian president calls for pragmatic, flexible resolution of Kosovo dispute

Serbian President Boris Tadic said that a pragmatic and flexible approach is required to resolve the deadlock pertaining to the future status of Kosovo, reported the Serbian news agency Tanjug on Thursday. READ MORE

US flexes muscle in the Black Sea

By M K Bhadrakumar

The Black Sea is about to lose its historical exclusivity as a Russian-Turkish preserve. A visit by the USA-TRANSCOM commander General Duncan McNabb to Bucharest has sealed the fate of the Black Sea as the latest entry into the chronicles of the "new great game". READ MORE

Standards of Bagapsh

By Sergey Markedonov

The second President of Abkhazia Sergei Bagapsh died on Tuesday, May 29th, 2011 in Moscow. This politician was not simply the second Head of the Republic. No matter how people in and out of Abkhazia treat him, the name of Sergei Bagapsh will be connected by historians with the recognition of state independence of the entity, which survived 14-month armed conflict, long-standing regime of sanctions and existence with “hung up” status. READ MORE

OSCE ready to further co-operation with Turkmenistan

The OSCE is ready to expand the scope of its co-operation with Turkmenistan in all security dimensions and support the country in implementing its OSCE commitments, said the OSCE
Chairperson-in-Office, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Audronius Ažubalis, today during his official visit to Turkmenistan, the organization said in a press release. READ MORE

Surprise Turn Against Qaddafi is Russia's Latest Westward Step

Russia, a quasi-democracy and an imperial power that never quite gave up all of its colonial holdings, has dedicated much of its post-Soviet foreign policy to resisting everything that the NATO intervention in Libya stands for. It shrugs at human rights violators, abhors military intervention, enshrines the sovereign right of states to do whatever they want internally without fear of outside meddling, and above all objects to the West imposing its ideology on others. NATO itself, after all, is a military alliance constructed in opposition to the Soviet Union. But Russian President Dmitri Medvedev took a surprising break from Russian foreign policy precedent on Friday when, in the middle of a G8 summit in France, he declared that Libyan leader Muammar "Qaddafi has forfeited legitimacy" and that Russia plans "to help him go." READ MORE

Hungary’s face of the EU presidency

By Jan Mainka

Interview with Piroska Bakos, spokeswoman, hostess of the EU presidency in Hungary. READ MORE