A military court in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg on June 21 sentenced anti-war activist Mikhail Sokolov to 11 years in prison for throwing Molotov cocktails at a military recruitment center in the city of Perm in December.
A group of 27 Kyrgyz politicians, activists, and journalists, who were arrested last year for protesting against a border deal with Uzbekistan, have gone on trial on multiple charges, including plotting mass unrest.
Central Asia faces water scarcity, rising tensions and uneven distribution, affecting the agricultural and hydropower sectors. This has led to the need for a local water management framework rather than an architecture imposed by another institution. Despite US efforts, the Uzbekistan model of effective border management and water distribution has yielded positive results, with last year s approval of two key agreements with neighbour Kyrgyzstan on cross-border water resource management. The agreement over the Andijon reservoir can set the template for the region, with India s expertise in cross-border river management providing a supportive model.
Animosity is growing towards illegal migrants from Central Asian countries that were formerly Soviet republics. Migrant communities have been blamed for crime and bullying ethnic Russians.[1] Topwar.ru columnist Anna Kozireva identifies the migrants as the main conduit for drugs flowing from Afghanistan to Russia. She writes that though the Taliban had promised to combat the
NATO has reached a watershed and needs to evaluate both its geographic scope and the spectrum of threats it is willing to address. The Alliance needs to view its capabilities with clarityand sobriety and to approach future missions with realism, bothmilitary and economic. With the survival of our civilization atstake, failure is not an option.