The authorities of the self-declared Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) are apparently seeking to extend their control over society in this Russian-occupied and Moscow-backed eastern Ukrainian region. As one notable sign of this trend, the newly created council of Luhansk atamans (Cossack leaders) recently met in... MORE

On July 3, Belarus celebrated its Independence Day. Belarus is the only post-Soviet country whose major national holiday is an anniversary of the liberation of its capital city from Nazi German invaders (July 3, 1944). The Independence Days of other post-Soviet states tend to either... MORE

The Druzhba oil pipeline contamination debacle (see EDM, April 26) continues to loom over negotiations between Belarus and Russia on a range of energy issues. Russia notified pipeline companies along Druzhba’s network in Belarus, Ukraine and Western Europe of the chemical contamination in mid-April, but... MORE

On Tuesday, April 30, Russian President Vladimir Putin received Nikolai Tokarev, the president of monopoly oil transit operator Transneft, to hear the latter’s report on the Druzhba pipeline situation (1prime.ru, April 30). Five days earlier, Germany, Poland, Czechia (the Czech Republic) and Slovakia all halted... MORE

Last year’s October 31 bombing of an Arkhangelsk Federal Security Service (FSB) office (see EDM, November 9, 2018) triggered an investigation, which recently released its final report. The conclusions of the report reveal that a participant in an online “insurgent speech” chat room, writing under... MORE

On March 18, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed laws prohibiting “obvious disrespect” to Russian authorities and the distribution of “untrue public information” (Novaya Gazeta, March 18). Effectively, these laws appear to introduce direct government censorship in Russia. Kremlin propaganda itself facilitates the distribution of disinformation... MORE

In the 1920s, Joseph Stalin divided up the Circassians into four major “nations” as part of his initiative to block any efforts by that deported nationality to restore a single titular republic, attract millions of its co-ethnics back from abroad, and create a powerful bulwark... MORE

Ethnic Russians have never formed a major proportion of the population of Dagestan, the most Islamic of the republics within the Russian Federation. Their greatest number and highest share were recorded in the 1959 census, when there were 213,754 Russians, who together made up 20.1... MORE

At 8:52 in the morning, on October 31, a 17-year old student and self-described anarchist at the local college walked into the Archangelsk field office of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), pulled a homemade explosive device from his backpack, and detonated it. The bombing,... MORE

For the first time this year, masked Russian police officers detained Muslim worshipers coming out of a mosque near Moscow, raising fears in the local Islamic and human rights community that the authorities may be readying for a broader crackdown against Muslims there. Such a... MORE