On the night of March 11, police officer Batyr Belkharoev was shot while he was driving his car near the village of Sagopshi in Ingushetia’s Malgobek district (https://lifenews.ru/news/128832). He died on the spot, while a relative traveling with him, Magomed Belkharoev, was wounded and taken... MORE

Nobody should think that Moscow’s aggressive campaign to restore its former status as a global great power or its fundamentally anti-American policy is currently confined to Ukraine. Indeed, while the invasion, occupation and annexation of Crimea—not to mention the threats to eastern Ukraine—continue, Moscow is... MORE

Civil activists in Kabardino-Balkaria have launched a campaign to improve the status of the regional languages of the Kabardins (a.k.a. Circassians) and the Balkars. The activists say that with the republican parliament in the process of adopting new legislation about languages, it has ignored many... MORE

The hottest issues for Belarus these days are prospects for further economic growth under new conditions—in part informed by Russia’s annexation of Crimea and Belarus’s official position with regard to this groundbreaking event. Even before the crisis in Ukraine, Belarus faced dwindling economic growth, an... MORE

The Russian Federal Assembly will probably recognize the official annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in the coming days. Having essentially avoided armed resistance to the Russian operation to date, the interim Ukrainian government in Kyiv has instead embarked on intensive diplomatic efforts to de-escalate the... MORE

Addressing Russia’s bicameral parliament on March 18, President Vladimir Putin announced Crimea’s incorporation into the Russian Federation. The founding documents on Crimea’s “admission” into Russia were signed on the same day, with immediate “legal” effect as far as Russia is concerned (kremlin.ru, March 18, 19).For... MORE

While television has mostly been state-controlled for a long time in Russia, newspapers and Internet media have remained relatively free. That relative freedom appears to be one of the first casualties in the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine as it seeks to prevent a Maidan-style protest... MORE

If Moscow absorbs Crimea, as now seems likely, this illegal act will pose a serious threat to the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church. Indeed, the annexation of Ukrainian territory will likely lead to the formation of a single autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church and... MORE

As Moscow moves to consolidate its de facto control over the Crimean peninsula by incorporating the territory into the Russian Federation, it is worth examining and understanding the military factors in the Kremlin’s risk taking policy since the onset of the crisis. An entirely underestimated... MORE

A little over a week ago (March 7), Russian military helicopters and drones broke the terms of the August 12, 2008, agreement reached by Nicolas Sarkozy and Dmitry Medvedev—then presidents of France and Russia, respectively—to end the five-day Russian-Georgian war. The Russian aircraft entered Georgian... MORE