What is fueling Caucasus arms race?

Russian President Vladimir Putin's sudden announcement of enormous military exercises on the Black Sea has taken many by surprise, and many observers see the sudden announcement as Putin flexing Russia's military muscles.

As investigators probing the Boston bombers turned their attention to six months one of the brothers spent in Dagestan last year, the commander of a local rebel faction issued a statement Sunday distancing himself from the attack. The search for the motive of the terror in Boston seemed to focus increasingly on Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the 26-year-old elder brother, who had come to the FBI’s attention in 2011 as an alleged “follower of radical Islam” before traveling to Dagestan in 2012.

Japanese officials followed their first defense spending increase in a decade by promising they would lay out another 2.1 billion dollar one-time bonus for defense procurement.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. and Germany say Russia must not provide the Assad regime with an advanced air defense system that they believe could prolong Syria’s civil war and draw Israel into the ongoing conflict. Secretary of State John Kerry says Russia’s transfer of the S-300 missiles would be “not helpful” while Washington and Moscow try to get the Syrian government and opposition into peace negotiations.

Many were wondering what Russia's response to Germany's deposit confiscation drill in Cyprus would be. The confusion was moderated somewhat after it was uncovered that the very Russians who were supposed to be punished, have been able to withdraw some or most of their Cyprus-based cash either before the Cyprus D(eposit Confiscation)-Day or during the capital controlled blackout using various disclosed loopholes.

Russia and Georgia greed to meet again in January after a "difficult" round of talks on Wednesday that was partly dominated by the issue of Georgians recently detained in Moscow-backed South Ossetia, diplomats said.Georgia said it had raised the detentions during the eighth meeting on reducing tensions between Russia and Georgia, which fought a five-day war over the separatist region in August 2008."This is a huge problem," Georgian First Deputy Foreign Minister Giorgi Bokeria said after the talks in Geneva.

US stars Andy Garcia and Sharon Stone visited the capital of ex-Soviet Georgia on Sunday to attend the local premiere of a Hollywood drama about the country's war with Russia in August 2008.The all-action film, "Five Days of August", focuses on a fictional American reporter and his cameraman trying to establish the truth out about atrocities committed during the five-day conflict."It's an anti-war movie," Garcia, who plays the role of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, told a news conference in Tbilisi.

Georgia and Russia, who fought a brief war last year, have agreed to re-open their land border to traffic three years after it was closed, Georgia's foreign ministry said Thursday.The two countries have reached a deal to re-open the Upper Lars checkpoint, which was closed in 2006, Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister Nino Kalandadze said.It is the only land border crossing that does not go through Georgia's Russian-backed rebel regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia which were the focus of the 2008 conflict.