US and Russian Involvement in Recent Domestic Upheavals in Georgia and Armenia
By Benyamin Poghosyan, PhD, Chairman, Center for Political and Economic Strategic Studies
After the collapse of the Soviet Union the newly independent successor states faced numerous challenges: economic collapse, ethnic conflicts, and a rapid introduction of market reforms which ushered in large scale poverty as well as a quick enrichment of very small portion of the population. At the same time, there was a constant flow of Western experts and consultants who were embedded in almost all state institutions. In the first decade of independence there was a vague but widespread perception that the ultimate destination of former Soviet republics would be membership of the Euro-Atlantic institutions - EU and NATO. READ MORE
| External Relations | Russia, Ukraine, Belarus
