Category: Eurasia

Civic Freedom Monitor addresses civil society’s challenges

     

The International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL) today launched the “Civic Freedom Monitor,” a rebranded version of its long-running NGO Law Monitor – widely recognized as the most comprehensive source… Read more »

Ever ‘more authoritarian’ Azerbaijan’s referendum ‘lacks legitimacy’

     

Observers are questioning the integrity of the constitutional referendum in Azerbaijan, in which the government reported 91 percent approval of sweeping constitutional changes, including extending the presidential term and increasing… Read more »

Political violence in Putin’s Russia

     

  The February 2015 assassination of Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov was only the latest and most dramatic example of the political violence that has been central to the Putin… Read more »

Putin’s Master Plan: Russian autocracy ‘will always threaten Ukraine’

     

Vladimir Putin is “a calculating master of geopolitics with a master plan to divide Europe, destroy NATO, re-establish Russian influence in the world, and most of all, marginalize the United… Read more »

Succession planning flurry follows Eurasian autocrat’s death

     

The recent death of Uzbekistan’s seemingly perpetual president has drawn fresh attention to the uncertainties of one-man rule elsewhere in Central Asia and the Caspian Sea region, writes Freedom House… Read more »

Legacies of Totalitarianism – all too evident in CEE

     

Ironically, it was not the end of communism, but the disintegration of post-communism, that has ushered in a time of deeply unsettling global uncertainty, notes Stephen E. Hanson, director of… Read more »

Putin preparing new phase of ‘guerrilla war’ against the West

     

As President Vladimir Putin further tightens his grip on power after dubious elections that gave his party an absolute majority, Russia is sliding into protracted stagnation. The Economics Ministry has adjusted downward… Read more »

The Illiberal Turn? Reasserting Democratic Values in Central and Eastern Europe

     

Michael Ignatieff begins his new post this fall as president and rector of the famed Central European University – about as politically charged a job there is right now in… Read more »