For most of the last half-millennium, the lands between Moscow and Berlin have thought of themselves and been thought about by others almost exclusively in terms of an east-west axis, as a battleground between the Russian state and European countries. But before that, they were... MORE

Russia’s official position on the current conflict in eastern Ukraine has been seen as especially hypocritical, given its own treatment of secessionist efforts of Chechnya. While Moscow supports and promotes ethnic-Russian separatism in Ukraine, in the North Caucasus it brutally suppressed persistent attempts of the... MORE

The swift and overwhelming victory of Petro Poroshenko in the May 25 Ukrainian presidential elections (ITAR-TASS, May 25) raises questions about the new president’s security policy. In fact, he now faces multiple national security challenges:•    Insurgency in the east supported by Russia and some local... MORE

Amongst the many complexities of integrating Crimea into Russia, problems regarding the currency and the scheduling of local elections remain at the top. On May 14, the lower house of the Russian parliament (the State Duma) adopted a resolution officially scheduling the local legislative elections... MORE

Executive Summary Russia’s March 17 annexation of Crimea capped nearly two decades of increasingly fractious Russian-Ukrainian relations, punctuated by rising tensions over Russia’s lease of Sevastopol and natural gas transit and cost issues. The election of the pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych as president in March 2010... MORE

As the Crimean Tatars commemorated the 70th anniversary of their deportation from Crimea on May 18, many wondered what the Tatars’ next moves under the Russian occupation will be. Having already deported ethnic groups en masse—the Karachays in November 1943, the Chechens and Ingush in... MORE

Ukraine’s wealthiest industrialist, Donetsk-based Renat Akhmetov, on May 20, urged the workers of Donbas to protest against “those who call themselves some kind of people’s republic of Donetsk [secessionist leaders].” In a televised address via the Ukrayina channel, Akhmetov declared that the region’s population “can... MORE

The Russian military seems to have begun a genuine pullback of combat forces, which had been poised for almost three months on the eastern borders of Ukraine. On May 19, President Vladimir Putin flew to Shanghai to oversee the signing of a grandiose agreement to... MORE

The World Forum of Tatar Youth recently staged a game called “Tatar Watch” in Kazan, the capital of the Russian Middle Volga republic of Tatarstan. The “Tatar patrols,” as they called themselves, went around the city in groups of seven people, wearing T-shirts that said... MORE

The Russian government, like its Soviet predecessor, has a long history of sending draftees to places far from their homes and using non-Russians as cannon fodder in conflicts of one kind or another. But rarely has the cynicism behind such policies been so evident or... MORE