On November 18, Russian and regional analysts in Karachaevo-Cherkessia discussed the striking difference between two neighboring and quite similar republics, Karachaevo-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria. While Kabardino-Balkaria has seen the rise of a militant insurgency in recent years, Karachaevo-Cherkessia has managed to remain fairly quiet, even though... MORE

On November 20, Russian-occupied South Ossetia’s (Tskhinvali region) separatist regime declared that it is negotiating a new “comprehensive agreement on integration” with Russia, which will raise the relationship between the two sides to a “qualitatively new level,” especially in the military sphere (regnum.ru, November 20).... MORE

Last weekend (November 21), Ukraine marked the first anniversary of the EuroMaidan—the public protests in Kyiv that lasted through the hard winter of discontent and brought down the corrupt regime of Viktor Yanukovych on February 21. As its war for state survival continues to rage,... MORE

On November 11, Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev made a pre-announced televised address to the nation. Since 1997, the president annually addresses the two chambers of parliament at the beginning of the calendar year, thus allowing him to outline his administration’s forthcoming plans and programs and... MORE

As he has done for years, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov was the first to announce the latest government operation against rebel militants in Chechnya. Kadyrov stated on his personal Instagram webpage that government forces had killed a group of four bandits in the republic’s Sunzha... MORE

Tensions between Russia and the United States, deepened by the Ukraine crisis, have now affected nuclear security cooperation—an area that had previously resisted the fallout from earlier disputes over ballistic missile defense, Georgia and other issues. At the beginning of November 2014, media leaks revealed... MORE

Three inter-related themes engage attention in the Belarusian and international media: the ambivalent image of Belarus, its upcoming presidential elections, and the Belarusian economy. The economy appears to be the linchpin of this triad. It informs Belarus’s image, if only to some extent. But although... MORE

The tradition of North Caucasus mountaineers serving in the Russian army goes back 150 years. In the 1870s, the Russian Empire tried to tie the mountaineers to the Russian system of governance by forming ethnic-based volunteer battalions. North Caucasus battalions fought in Russian wars for... MORE

In a transcript of a TV interview to German journalists published by the Kremlin this week, President Vladimir Putin declared: “There is war in the East of Ukraine. The Ukrainian government is using its army and even ballistic missiles. You [the West] are silent. Do... MORE

As Russia’s economic stagnation reverberates in the North Caucasus, the regional elites have begun to scramble for local resources. An uncharacteristically open discussion erupted in Dagestan’s republican parliament in Makhachkala on October 30, when a well-known politician in the republic, Eduard Khidirov, stated that between... MORE