The clash between Russia and Japan over the Southern Kurils in the North Pacific highlight Russia’s emerging role in the Asia Pacific Region and its relations with China and Japan.

• Smita Purushottam
• November 03, 2010
• Special Feature

At their second Summit in Sochi on August 18, 2010, Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan agreed to reinforce their cooperation. The United States has supported the Russian initiative due to its own compulsions and the China factor. India needs to pursue a well considered “Eurasian Heartland” policy in the context of these developments.

• Smita Purushottam
• August 27, 2010
• Issue Brief

The Nord Stream Project will further strengthen Prime Minister Putin’s vision of positioning Russia as a major power in the world.

• Arvind Gupta
• April 12, 2010
• IDSA Comments

Russia has considerably enhanced its international position by leveraging Western weaknesses stemming from the unwinnable war in Afghanistan and the adverse impact of the financial crisis, as well as Western dependence in dealing with Iran and North Korea.

• Arvind Gupta
• February 11, 2010
• IDSA Comments

Pratibha Patil’s three-day visit to Tajikistan (September 6 to 8, 2009) was the first ever visit by an Indian President to the Central Asian region. She attended the National Day celebrations of Tajikistan as the Guest of Honour. President Patil held talks with Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon on a wide range of issues, including efforts to tackle terrorism, bilateral relations, and developments in and around the region aimed at consolidating ties between the two countries in the political, economic and other spheres.

• Meena Singh Roy
• September 23, 2009
• IDSA Comments

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) held its ninth summit on June15 -16, 2009 in Yekaterinburg. The Heads of the SCO member states, observer states and guests of the host state - President of Afghanistan, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Executive Secretary of the Commonwealth of Independent States, Secretary-General of the Eurasian Economic Community, and Secretary-General of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, participated in the meeting.

• Meena Singh Roy
• June 24, 2009
• IDSA Comments

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is attending a slew of Russian hosted high profile meetings including those of the SCO and BRIC in Yekaterinburg which would be viewed keenly by most international watchers. The SCO, keenly nurtured by Russia and China as an exclusive nucleus, had hitherto excluded those with observer status from its core deliberations. The forum became popular as an embryonic counterpoise to the United States after 2005 when it bluntly issued a quit notice to the US from Central Asia and decided to salvage an assortment of autocrats being ostracized by the West.

• P. Stobdan
• June 16, 2009
• IDSA Comments

The fourth consecutive visit of President Nursultan Nazarbayev culminated in his being the chief guest at India’s 60th Republic Day parade. This shows the increasing importance India attaches to its strategic ties with Kazakhstan, a fact that has also been acknowledged by President Nazarbayev. In fact, the custom of inviting a head of state, particularly on such an occasion, is an effort to showcase two facets of India. One, to provide a glimpse to the chief guest of vast opportunities that exists in Federal India.

• Zakir Hussain
• February 18, 2009
• IDSA Comments

Georgia was a constituent republic of the former USSR. In 1991, the dissolution of the Soviet Union led to the independence of Georgia. In turn, the autonomous regions of Georgia, namely South Ossetia and Abkhazia, attempted to break away from Georgia, resulting in civil strife in the early Nineties. These conflicts were settled with Russian involvement with the United Nations Mission in Georgia deploying in a peacekeeping role in Abkhazia and a Russian peacekeeping force deploying under a Joint Control Commission in South Ossetia.

• Ali Ahmed
• September 25, 2008
• IDSA Comments

The Russian military blitzkrieg to counter the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s dispatch of his Israeli and US trained and equipped forces to retake the breakaway region of South Ossetia on August 7, 2008 took many by surprise. Moscow brazenly took the war straight into the Georgian heartland routing the Georgian forces in South Ossetia and expelling them from the other main Georgian separatist region of Abkhazia.

• Thomas Mathew
• September 17, 2008
• IDSA Comments