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What's Behind Kyrgyzstan's U.S. and Russian Counterterror Training Centers?

By Joshua Kucera

A couple of weeks ago, Kyrgyzstan's president, Roza Otunbayeva, announced that the country was planning to construct two counterterror training centers in the southern part of the country, and that one would be built by Russia and the other by the U.S. Her announcement raised a lot of questions, which I posed to Alisher Khamidov, a EurasiaNet contributor and expert on southern Kyrgyzstan. He said that fears of Islamist militants from Tajikistan as well as the military of Uzbekistan are motivating Kyrgyzstan to develop the centers, and that Otunbayeva puts a higher priority on the U.S. center than on the Russian one. READ MORE

Medvedev to push Russia's Asian integration at China conference

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will attend the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) Annual Conference in China where he will address Russia's economic integration into the Asia Pacific region, a presidential aide said on Tuesday. READ MORE

Abkhazia: between the hammer and the anvil

A reply to a recent article by Brian Withmore over at www.rferl.org. READ MORE

Russia battles with Europe over Ukraine

Ukraine this week continued its weeklong negotiations with the European Union over associate membership in, and the formation of a free trade agreement with, the bloc. READ MORE

Poland should reinvent itself as the bridge between east and west

By Sławomir Sierakowski

Poland's old anti-Russian prejudices are preventing it from finding its true place in Europe READ MORE

Libya exposes Russian rifts

By Ariel Cohen

Barack Obama’s “reset” with Russia is looking flimsy in the wake of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s vitriolic reaction to events in Libya last week. READ MORE

Third Energy Package: dispute between Russia and the EU

By Česlovas Iškauskas

During the visit in Brussels on 24 February, Vladimir Putin tried to push own energy policy model to the EU. Negotiations were indeed very difficult and parties didn’t manage to coordinate their positions. But the EU’s third internal energy market package took effect on 3 March. READ MORE

Russia’s response to the Libyan crisis: a paradigm shift?

By Eugene Ivanov

What does Russia's divergent response to international action in North Africa say about future foreign-policy choices in the region? READ MORE

Russia, Kazakhstan team up to produce rare earth metals

Russia's Federal Atomic Energy Agency (Rosatom) and Kazakhstan's uranium producer Kazatomprom signed a memorandum of intent to cooperate in the production and sales of rare earth metals, the market for which is squeezed by Chinese export restrictions, Sergei Kiriyenko, head of Russia's Federal Atomic Energy Agency (Rosatom), said on Wednesday. READ MORE

Solutions for Russian-Ukrainian Gas Brinksmanship

By RICHARD B. ANDRES, MICHAEL KOFMAN AND MICAH J. LOUDERMILK

Tensions between Ukraine and Russia are not new, but their resurgence bodes ill for European energy security. This latest dispute between Europe’s largest natural gas supplying state and its key gas transit state should be a warning flag to Europe that, despite efforts by the IMF and other countries, the underlying causes of the dispute that left Europe without gas for heating and electricity in 2009 remain unresolved and require European intervention. Below we describe the nature of the problem and propose an approach for addressing one of Europe’s most important energy security problems. READ MORE