For the first time since the end of the Soviet Union, Moscow has dispatched internal troops to a republic outside the North Caucasus to suppress what it calls “nationalist band formations” in Bashkortostan. Not only does that mean that there is a new “hot spot”... MORE

On November 28, the opposition Patrioty Rossii (Patriots of Russia) party’s faction in the North Ossetian parliament walked out of a parliamentary session to protest United Russia’s unwillingness to cooperate with the opposition. Earlier, the republican parliament had decided that a joint commission would distribute... MORE

The notion of “re-Sovietization” has been on the lips of many Russia-watchers, and now US State Secretary Hillary Clinton has spelled it out after a rather disappointing meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (Rossiiskaya Gazeta, December 7). Russian foreign policy slipped into confusion during... MORE

According to the newspaper Izvestia, Kyrgyzstan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs requested that Russia provide the small Central Asian republic with direct assistance in the form of arms and technical support. Kyrgyzstan’s internal affairs ministry, which controls the country’s police forces, seeks from Russia two helicopters,... MORE

In recent months, Kazakhstan and Georgia have joined with Azerbaijan and Turkey to make considerable progress in their Silk Wind Project, which aims to construct a high-speed, multimodal container transportation system for freight shipments between the countries of Europe, the Caucasus and Asia. According to... MORE

The end of November was packed with events for the head of the small North Caucasusian republic of Ingushetia. On November 22–23, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov visited Kazakhstan, where he met people from the local Ingush diaspora. The Ingush diaspora came to existence in Kazakhstan following the... MORE

In September 2012, Russia carried out sea trials of the retired Soviet-era heavy carrier “Sergei Gorshkov,” which it is retrofitting and selling to India. The results of the sea trial of the carrier, which the Indians will rechristen the Vikramaditya, ended in embarrassing failure and... MORE

On November 26, Alyaksandr Lukashenka gave a 1.5-hour interview to Reuters. The text of the interview was published on the internet portal “Belorusskie Novosti” (https://naviny.by/rubrics/politic/2012/11/27/ic_articles_112_180033/), but Lukashenka’s seemingly casual remark about Vladimir Putin “twisting his spine” during a recent bout of judo when “he lifted... MORE

Having failed to defeat the armed resistance, the Dagestani authorities decided to look for help by finding favorable interpretations of Sharia law among foreign scholars. The republican authorities certainly received official consent from Moscow for their quest abroad (https://russian.irib.ir/radioislam/2010-08-31-12-33-40/2010-09-09-08-01-11/item/156021-%D0%B2). Their efforts resulted in the condemnation... MORE

According to recent census results, the rate of the overall decline in the population of the Russian Federation nearly doubled during the past decade compared to the rate over the course of the 1990s, but that trend obscures rather than highlights three more important developments:... MORE