The need to keep the channels of dialogue open with an unpredictable Russia is taken as an absolute imperative by many Western politicians. But they are often surprised when this tactic backfires. The foreign ministers of the member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization... MORE

Muslim al-Shishani is the nom de guerre of Murad Margoshvili, commander of the Junud al-Sham (“Soldiers of Syria”) insurgent group operating in Syria. Margoshivili is a Georgian national, but he is also an ethnic Kist, a member of the Chechen sub-ethnic group that lives in... MORE

Giorgi Vashadze, a high-ranking member of Georgia’s formerly ruling United National Movement (UNM) and a member of the Georgian parliament, left his political party on May 5. Immediately, he unleashed harsh criticism for the organization to which he had pledged his allegiance for more than... MORE

Russia, Germany, France, and Ukraine held an expanded meeting of their foreign affairs ministers and senior staffs on May 11 in Berlin (the “Normandy” format). Two overlapping issues topped the meeting’s agenda: possible “elections” in the Russian-controlled Donetsk-Luhansk territory, and policing those proposed elections to... MORE

The “Normandy” powers’ (Ukraine, Germany, France, Russia) latest meeting, in Berlin, on May 11, which failed to address Ukraine’s concerns, has stiffened Kyiv’s refusal to go along with local “elections” in the Donetsk and Luhansk “peoples’ republics” (DPR, LPR). That territory is Ukrainian de jure... MORE

In recent months, the Federal Security Service (FSB) allegedly thwarted several terrorist attacks on Russian soil by migrants from Central Asia. In April, Russian security services claimed that four citizens of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan were planning terrorist acts in Moscow (Kommersant, May 6), while in... MORE

A recent police operation against militants in the Dagestani city of Derbent was so bloody that even the Islamic State (IS) mentioned it. The clash started as police were checking out several homes after receiving a tip concerning the whereabouts of Bairamali Abasov, the leader... MORE

In trying to find a way to stop the bloodshed in Syria and settle the conflict in the breakaway eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas, Western foreign ministers have taken to guardedly praising Russia’s constructive role. This week (May 17), in Vienna, Russian Minister of Foreign... MORE

Last month’s deadly skirmishes along the line of conflict in Karabakh (April 2–5), the so-called “four-day war,” highlighted the need for a reinvigorated international mediation effort. Immediately afterward, Russia appeared ready to take the initiative. The ceasefire agreement brokered by Moscow, on April 5, followed... MORE

On May 15, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kirill, visited Kabardino-Balkaria for the first time. He was greeted in the republic with great pomp. The top Russian Orthodox cleric consecrated the Cathedral of Mary Magdalene and held a liturgy in Nalchik, the republic’s... MORE