Word: russians
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...deepens its ties with Pakistan's historical rival, India, foreign policy experts suggest Islamabad may be trying to expand its relationship with Moscow. Since the Soviet days, India has always been Russia's traditional South Asian ally. Now Pakistani defense officials have mooted possible deals for Russian military hardware, moving away from the tacit understandings of a Cold War past. "Russia is trying to find a foothold in the region," says Brahma Chellaney, a strategic affairs analyst at the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research. "There's no reason why it shouldn't start selling arms to Pakistan...
...July 30, Russian president Dmitri Medvedev sat down for talks with the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan, two countries that sit in the crosshairs of the U.S.-led war on terror. The meeting with Afghan president Hamid Karzai and his Pakistani counterpart, Asif Zardari, took place in Dushanbe, capital of Tajikistan. Reportedly on the table were plans to beef up trade ties as well as improve cooperation in the fight against Islamist extremism - clear signs, experts say, that Moscow is bolstering its role in the "Af-Pak" theater, a region Russia had largely retreated from after the scarring decade-long...
...Russian-orchestrated meeting comes amid fears that ongoing battles with Taliban militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan are spilling over into Central Asia - particularly Tajikistan, which shares a porous 800-mile-long (1,300 km-long) border with Afghanistan. Over recent months, Tajik security forces have been involved in an extensive campaign to combat local militants and supposed drug gangs operating in its mountainous borderlands, but there are also rumors of the return of Tajik Taliban fighters who have traded one rugged frontier for another. As if on cue, while the premiers were in discussion, a car bomb blast rocked Dushanbe...
Ninety-two years after the Russian Revolution and 20 years on from the fall of the Berlin Wall, Europe's last Soviet-style government is finally on its way out. In Moldova this week, four months after popular upheaval, the Communist Party accepted defeat in a national election. Four pro-Western opposition parties must now scrabble together a coalition which they say will distance the country from Moscow, more fully embrace democracy and integrate with Europe. "This is definitely the beginning of something new," says Viorel Ursu, Moldovan analyst with the Open Society Institute in Brussels. "The difference between...
...shares many cultural similarities. Moldova was part of Romania until World War II, when a chunk of the country was given to the Soviets by the Nazis. Fears of unification kept previous Moldovan governments from building bilateral ties. And then there is the problem of Transnistria, a tiny Russian-speaking province backed by Moscow that wants to secede. "At least we have a year," says Ursu, laughing. "Because constitutionally, you cannot hold elections again for another year. So that gives everyone a little time. I'm optimistic, as are most analysts, that this is the start...