Moscow, Russia’s sprawling capital of 12.36 million, has a waste problem. The city has no recycling system: all the city’s waste goes to landfills. Rubbish sent to landfills has increased by 30% over the past ten years. These landfills were originally located outside of Moscow, but due to encroachment are now within the city’s borders.
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Since its independence in April 1991, the former Soviet republic of Georgia has been involved in not one but three armed conflicts. Simmering disputes within two regions of Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, between local separatists and the majority Georgian population, have erupted into widespread inter-ethnic violence and wars.
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On August 12, five nations resolved a twenty-seven-year-old dispute over how to divide up the oil and gas reserves contained in the Caspian Sea. The treaty, signed in the Caspian coastal city of Aktau, Kazakhstan, ends a spat over whether the Caspian is a sea or a lake, and clarifies the maritime boundaries of the surrounding countries.
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Those watching the FIFA World Cup’s final on TV may have barely noticed because producers immediately turned their cameras away from the field, but there was a pitch invasion during the game between France and Croatia. Veronica Nikulshina, Olga Kurachova, Pyotr Verzilov and Olga Pakhtusova, all members of the Russian punk protest group Pussy Riot, managed to run onto the field at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow. Dressed as police officers, they interrupted the game in the 52nd minute, forcing the referee to suspend play until stewards wrestled the activists off the field. The invasion happened as Russian President Vladimir Putin watched from the stands.
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Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, water has been a main source of conflict in Central Asia. A recent report by the International Crisis Group has spoken of the need to end the “weaponization of water” and emphasized the importance of technical, rather than politicized, solutions to sharing regional resources like water.
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