The Russo-Ukrainian War, now entering its seventh month, has dramatically altered the dynamics of intra-Chechen politics and, rather unexpectedly, brought the half-forgotten issue of Chechnya’s difficult, often adversarial relations with Moscow to the fore. Even preceding the Kremlin’s re-invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022,... MORE

Russia is proceeding apace to absorb the occupied territories in Ukraine’s Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv provinces, already transforming them into Russia’s own image. Western powers have reacted to the prospect of Ukraine’s further amputation with a deafening silence. In a rare exception, the US White... MORE

Most countries are slowly recovering from the disastrous demographic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, but Russia is not. Instead, as new data shows, the Russian Federation has resumed its long-term demographic decline (see EDM, September 13, 2016), a trend likely to intensify and profoundly affect... MORE

Clearly desiring to give Moscow a taste of its own medicine, believing that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” a group of Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament) deputies is pressing for the passage of bills that would require Kyiv to recognize the Chechen Republic... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. Russia has set up a military-civil administration (MCA) in Ukraine’s occupied Zaporyzhzhia region along the same considerations as it did in Kherson region. Moscow is now adding a Zaporyzhzhia “regional government” to the MCA, as it has done... MORE

Russia is fastening its grip on Ukraine’s Kherson and Zaporyzhzhia regions through military-civil administrations (MCAs). Moscow employs MCAs as the main instruments of its occupation policy in southern Ukraine, quite unlike the familiar model of relying on local “republics” (i.e., Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria, Donetsk,... MORE

As a result of its full-scale re-invasion of Ukraine launched on February 24, Russia presently occupies most of Kherson Oblast, a southern region with a million inhabitants that borders on Crimea. In fact, Russian troops captured Kherson with a strike from the Crimean Peninsula, which... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. *To read Part Two, please click here. Removing officials loyal to Ukraine from local administrations and replacing them with nominees of the occupation authorities is a high priority of Russia’s occupation policy in southern Ukraine (see Part Two... MORE

In September 2016, the chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, General Valery Gerasimov, announced the creation of an anti-access, area-denial (A2/AD) zone over the Black Sea, centered on occupied Crimea (TASS, September 13, 2016). This A2/AD bubble, which has come to... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. *To read Part Two, please click here. Invaded Ukraine is negotiating under duress for a two-part deal with the invader Russia: a bilateral treaty on the terms of ending the war and another treaty by which Russia and... MORE