By George Niculescu,
EGF Affiliated Expert

In the aftermath of the failed summit hosted by the Russian president Dmitry Medvedev between his Azerbaijani and Armenian counterparts, held in Kazan (Russia) on 24 June 2011, with a view to agreeing on a peaceful settlement of the "frozen conflict" in Nagorno-Karabakh, it seems that the future of South Caucasus might be threatened by the specter of a new war. READ MORE

by Marat Terterov,
EGF Director

Although 2011 is still far from over, it is already likely to go down in history as the year of the so called ‘Arab Spring’. 2011 will be remembered as the year when Arab populations threw down the gauntlet to their stagnating regimes, revising their traditional authoritarian power model and at long last commencing the transition to democracy. So too it is time to consider revising the European Union’s relationship with Russia, which has stagnated rather badly in recent years. Since the “big bang” enlargement of the EU in 2004, Moscow’s relations with Brussels have been increasingly characterised by tension (if not crisis) in their energy ties and failure to reach agreement in many areas of common strategic interest. In June of this year, the bi-annual EU-Russia Summit, held in Nizhny Novgorod, was dubbed as the ‘Vegetable Summit’ in the international press as Moscow and Brussels exchanged blows over the Russian ban on vegetable imports from the EU following the E.coli health scare in Germany. READ MORE

February 21, 2011

The year 2011 has commenced with unprecedented levels of political turmoil, violence and tension in the Middle East. While this will not necessarily come as a surprise to readers of our previous research on the region, the fact that the Tunisian and Egyptian presidents have been dismissed from power barely within weeks of one another as a result of wide-scale street demonstrations in these two countries, clearly implies that the region has once again entered into a “game breaking” situation. As violence and further protests continue to spread rapidly across the region, the key question of concern to governments, investors and Middle Eastern ruling elites is now which regime is likely to fall next ? Despite the often overlooked heterogeneities of the region, the dramatic events already having taken place in Tunisia and Egypt in the first weeks of 2010 have inspired a domino effect of protests. Demonstrations of varying degree of magnitude are presently engulfing Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, Algeria, Morocco and Iran. They have also taken place in Jordan, while smaller scale demonstrations were planned in Kuwait. While other states across the Middle East are reporting less protest activity, the threat that the Egyptian-Tunisian contagion is posing to the region as a whole cannot not be underestimated. READ MORE

The Gorhenin Institute held a round table discussion - Prospects for Ukrainian Business in Russia - on 8 February. Experts and businessmen discussed the most promising areas of cooperation for Russian and Ukrainian business.
President of UPEC Industrial Group Anatoliy Girshfeld considers that Ukrainian business has prospects in Russia in the knowledge-based industry sector while operations in raw material sectors may hampered with strong government regulation. ‘The government actively regulates the raw materials and associated industry sectors and it won’t loose it’s hands on it. This is the main source of the budget income’, - O.Girshfeld said. ‘The state of the knowledge-based industry is a common problem to the entire post-Soviet space. That is why Russia has to allow entering its markets the companies developing in the knowledge-based industry, even in strategic sectors,’ – A.Girshfeld said. READ MORE

ISSUE #04
02/15/2011

The President of Ukraine does not agree with the statements that the fight against corruption in Ukraine only targets the people that are in opposition to the current Government.
The Head of State says the corrupt individuals, trying to avoid responsibility, are using various lobbying groups in the country as well as overseas with the purpose of discrediting the actions of the Ukrainian authorities. The President reminded that everybody should be held responsible for corrupt acts regardless of what political party they belong to. READ MORE

EGF Editorial

Is there any logic behind suggestions aired by senior decision makers, both past and present, that Russia could one day become a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)? At first glance, Russian membership to NATO may seem as a suggestion bordering on the absurd, given the history of relations between East (Russia/the Soviet Union) and West (the Euro-Atlantic bloc), as well as the fact that “Cold War warriors” are still in positions of power and influence on both sides of the former-Iron Curtain. That being said, the prospect of Moscow joining the NATO alliance has been implied publically by former-Russian presidents, Boris Yeltsin in 1991, Vladimir Putin in 2000, and by former-NATO Secretary-General, Lord Robertson, at a high level political conference in the Russian city of Yaroslavl just last September. READ MORE

On January 24th through January 26th, 2011, Gorshenin Institute has conducted a phone survey "Explosions in Makeyevka". A total of 1000 respondents age 18 or older representing all 25 regional centers, Kiev and Sebastopol, were selected at random following a systematic procedure aimed at filling sex, age and community quotas. The margin of error is no higher then +/-3.2%. Results of the survey conducted among the residents of Makeyevka are presented separately. READ MORE

Dr. Marat Terterov, EGF Principal Director, gave a lecture at Gubkin Oil and Gas University, Moscow, on November 19, 2010 on the topic “Energy and Geopolitics in Eurasia: why has energy become a factor of tension rather than a factor of cooperation ?” Please click here to read the key messages of the lecture.