Last Sunday (September 18), Russians went to the polls to elect the seventh State Duma in the post-Soviet history of their state. It is extremely difficult to say how many of them actually cast ballots because the official preliminary data on voter participation (47.8 percent,... MORE

Antonov, Ukraine’s only designer and manufacturer of aircraft, has severed all ties with Russia, which had been its main market and partner for decades (Ukrayinska Pravda, September 10). This was unavoidable, given the de facto war waged by Moscow, which prompted Kyiv to stop Ukrainian... MORE

Starting in 2014, the jamaats of the armed Islamist underground movement in the North Caucasus began, one by one, to pledge allegiance to the so-called Islamic State (IS). Kabardino-Balkarian insurgents split into those who became part of the Islamic State and those who remained loyal... MORE

As the dust settled, following the conclusion of the September 5–10 Kavkaz 2016 military exercise, the Russian Armed Forces entered into a budgetary battle with the Ministry of Finance. Russian Duma elections are scheduled for next Sunday (September 18); therefore, the process of drafting a... MORE

On September 2, Georgia’s State Audit Office (SAO) fined a ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party member and its affiliated organization, as well as the donors to two opposition parties—the Alliance of Patriots and State for People—for illegal donations. The SAO’s actions appeared to reflect this... MORE

Since 2013, when no-notice “snap” exercises were first introduced, they have become a regular feature in the training of the Russian Armed Forces. These more-or-less comprehensive exercises—regardless of the number of troops and equipment involved—generally tend to follow the same pattern: participating units are alerted,... MORE

Moscow reacted harshly to North Korea’s most recent nuclear test. “Such explicit disregard for the norms of international law and the opinion of the international community merits the strongest possible condemnation,” the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared in a statement (Mid.ru, September 9). The... MORE

Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has been carrying on a rapprochement with the Vatican and has even been pushing for Pope Francis to visit Minsk (Interfax, May 23, August 19). Such efforts, along with discussions in the Belarusian media about the possibility of having the Belarusian... MORE

On September 5, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) arrested Rasul Saduev, the head of the Criminal Investigations Department (Ugolovny Rozysk) of the Ministry of Interior in the Dagestani city of Khasavyurt. On the same day, the security services also arrested police colonel Gimbat Likhiyalov,... MORE

The Russian Armed Forces are routinely subject to “snap inspection” exercises and various measures to boost their ability to fight and deploy to assorted theaters of operations. And combat readiness checks were also central to the Kavkaz 2016 military exercise, the highlight of this training... MORE