President Vladimir Putin concluded 2015 with the approval of a revised National Security Strategy, which defines the strengthening of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as a threat and commits to countering it by securing the unity of Russian society and by building up the... MORE

On the night of December 9, unidentified assailants attacked an office of the most influential opposition party of Georgia, United National Movement (UNM), in the town of Dedoplistskaro, near the capital of Tbilisi (Civil Georgia, December 10). Former Georgian president (2008–2013) and the current governor... MORE

Chechnya’s two-century-old Sufi tradition experienced its first crisis 30 years ago, when the first Salafists appeared in the republic. The Salafists did not simply proclaim the supremacy of their teachings, but aspired to take power in the republic. The Salafist aim of grabbing power sparked... MORE

On December 13, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India broke ground on the constructions of a new natural gas pipeline that will carry Turkmenistani gas eastward toward the other three partner countries (Tribuneindia.com, Tribune.com.pk, December 13; Timesca.com, December 14). The Turkmenistan–Afghanistan–Pakistan–India (TAPI) pipeline project, in one... MORE

Russia’s conflict undertaking in Ukraine’s east fits within patterns familiar from other post-Soviet conflicts, initiated by Russia and conserved on Russian terms with international assistance (see EDM, December 17). However, Russia’s war in Ukraine’s east involves a number of major political and military innovations in... MORE

Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine’s east—directly and by proxy—has saddled Ukraine with a “frozen” conflict in its Donetsk and Luhansk provinces. The parallel situation in Crimea also qualifies as a “frozen conflict,” insofar as Russia’s forcible annexation is not recognized internationally, and in that sense... MORE

With 28-year-old Anatoly Zemlyanka’s notorious killing of 23-year-old member Magomed Khasiev, ethnic-Russian Muslims are again in the spotlight. Khasiev (a. k. a. Yevgeny Yudin), an ethnic-Russian convert to Islam, came from the Ural region in Russia, while Zemlyanka came from the Siberian town of Noyabrsk.... MORE

Converging interests are prompting Italy and Russia to forge an informal partnership to deal with the Syrian conflict and the Libyan civil war, which are among the most pressing security challenges facing the international community today. For distinct reasons, Rome and Moscow strive for geopolitical... MORE

On December 7, Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich, the winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in literature, gave her Nobel lecture in Stockholm (Naviny.by, December 7). The lecture was delivered in Russian, the language in which Alexievich writes. In it, she first dwelled on her post–World... MORE

Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov’s key energy company DTEK announced the restructuring of its $750 million and $160 million Eurobonds, which are set to mature in 2018 (Interfax-Ukraine, December 1). One of the main reasons for the company’s continuing financial troubles has been the war in... MORE