Latest Post-Soviet states Stories
NAMPA, Idaho, Nov. 30 /PRNewswire/ -- In this combination memoir/travel narrative, "In Post-Communist Worlds" (published by iUniverse), Dr. Martin Scheffer provides cultural and historical accounts of a four-year-long grand adventure behind the Iron Curtain shortly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, its Communist way of life and the end of its Cold War with America. "This book was written to help inform, mainly the general reader, about what the world after Communism looked like,...
By Judy Dempsey Relations between Russia and the West deteriorated further Thursday, with a warning by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the Kremlin's attempt to rebuild the country had taken a "dark turn" and that a "paranoid, aggressive impulse" from the Russian past was reappearing. In a speech in Washington on U.S.-Russia relations, Rice also criticized Moscow for using its role as a major energy supplier "as a political weapon against some of its neighbors." She castigated...
By Associated Press KIEV, Ukraine -- Vice President Dick Cheney insisted that Georgia will join NATO and backed its attempts to rebuild from its war with Russia on Thursday, using a trip to former Soviet republics as a show of U.S. support for their pro-Western leaders. Cheney flew to Kiev from Georgia, where he denounced Russia's "illegitimate, unilateral attempt" to redraw the U.S. ally's borders by force. "Georgia will be in our alliance," Cheney told reporters while standing alongside...
The Russian Parliament voted unanimously Monday to urge President Dmitri Medvedev to recognize the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the two separatist enclaves that at the center of recent fighting, further stoking tensions between Moscow and the West. The votes by both chambers of Parliament, which were not legally binding, come as the White House announced that Vice President Dick Cheney would travel to three former Soviet republics next week: Georgia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan....
By Anne Penketh European leaders will attempt to bury their differences and send a tough message to Moscow at an emergency meeting of Nato today, where there will be calls to freeze ties between the Western alliance and Russia in the aftermath of the war in Georgia. The US and Britain want Nato foreign ministers in Brussels to insist that Georgia's territorial integrity is "inviolable", British diplomats said. The Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned last week that the world could...
Having made a statement with his disproportionate use of brute force, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev halted his nation's military invasion of Georgia, Tuesday. The invasion allegedly was in retaliation for Georgian attacks on separatists in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. There is some truth to that. Ethnic minorities who have been trying to break free from Georgia have been under seige. When Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili sent troops into South Ossetia in an attempt to quash...
BERLIN (Reuters) - A senior U.S. official called on Monday for action by Europe and the United States to combat political repression in Belarus, which he said was becoming as severe as in the former Soviet Union. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Daniel Fried said he would be discussing Belarus and the government of President Alexander Lukashenko in a series of meetings with German officials. "It's been called Europe's last dictatorship. It is on the...
BERLIN (Reuters) - A senior U.S. official called on Monday for action by Europe and the United States to combat political repression in Belarus, which he said was becoming as severe as in the former Soviet Union. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Daniel Fried said he would be discussing Belarus and the government of President Alexander Lukashenko in a series of meetings with German officials. "It's been called Europe's last dictatorship. It is on the...
By Saul Hudson SHANNON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday urged President Nursultan Nazarbayev to hold the first fair elections in Kazakhstan, a Central Asian military ally wary of U.S. pressure. The top U.S. diplomat, who will meet Nazarbayev on Wednesday during a tour of ex-Soviet states, did not warn of any consequences should his expected election to a fourth term be rigged in December. Instead, Rice coaxed the only man to have ruled the country of vast...
By Saul Hudson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will visit Central Asia next week to try to wrest influence from Russia and China over an unstable region increasingly cool to Washington. Rice will make her first trip as secretary of state to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan -- former Soviet states and neighbors of China which have joined Moscow and Beijing to press Washington to withdraw troops from the area. At stake for Washington is influence in a...
