TALLINN - Estonia’s transit industry continues to show double-digit growth in 2011. This is a very encouraging sign for the economy, and leads analysts to speculate that the transit sector would be a lucrative investment in the future. Estonia is uniquely positioned to capture a significant share of the transit market between Russia and Scandinavia, Western Europe and the Baltics. READ MORE

The emergence of the Customs Union of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus has incited concern of the European Union. Within the EU program “Eastern Partnership” they declared about the establishment of free trade area with the EU, which may negatively influence the functioning of the CU and Common Economic Space (CES) establishment. READ MORE

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