On February 14, police in Tatarstan launched a criminal investigation into a video recording by the republic’s self-proclaimed insurgent leader, Emir Abdullah, who claimed responsibility for an attempted terrorist attack in the city of Nizhnekamsk last November (https://ntrtv.ru/index.php?newsid=19073).A masked man claiming to be Emir Abdullah... MORE

The influx of migrant workers from Central Asia and the South Caucasus and of workers from the North Caucasus has triggered clashes in Moscow and other Russian cities, but soon this flow appears likely to spark violence in places far from the Russian capital. According... MORE

An article in a Russian online military journal reports that some Kazan Tatar nationalists and Islamists are calling for the launch of a Euromaidan-style protest movement inside the Russian Federation. The article is a transparent effort to discredit the Ukrainian version by linking it to... MORE

Against the backdrop of anti-Islamic hysteria launched by the Russian government’s propaganda machine, it is hard not to notice the negative trend in such a delicate matter as interfaith dialogue in the country. Deliberately or not, a negative image of Muslims has been firmly established... MORE

If Joseph Stalin had not drawn “the so-called Orenburg corridor, which cut off Bashkortostan from the Kazakh SSR [Soviet Socialist Republic],” the editor of the independent Kazan weekly Zvezda Povolzhya says, Bashkortostan and Tatarstan would have gained union republic status before the collapse of the... MORE

No protest demonstration or statement from the opposition generates as much concern in the Russian capital as any suggestion that the republics and regions of the Russian Federation may be about to begin a new “parade of sovereignties” (see EDM, August 13). The term refers... MORE

Pro-Moscow activists and commentators have been universally critical of Tatarstan’s new nationality policy concept, a document adopted on August 1, which defines Kazan as the chief protector of Tatar national culture and of ethnic Tatars wherever they live (see EDM, August 6). The more moderate... MORE

Throughout 2012, Russian leaders refused to admit that there were any Chechens fighting on the side of the Syrian opposition. Ramzan Kadyrov tirelessly reassured the public that reports of Chechens being involved in the armed conflict in Syria were false (https://rusnovosti.ru/news/214102/). Kadyrov was apparently concerned... MORE

Tatar and Bashkir civil organizations are moving toward the forging of an alliance, regional and Russian experts say. “Bashkir nationalists have tried to find support among Tatar and Ugro-Finnish nationalists for several years, but their attempts were unsuccessful,” Bashkir analyst Ed Murzin told the Regnum... MORE

In January 2013, the newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported that the Tatar youth nationalist organization Azatlyk declared 2013 the year of a famous historical figure—the Mongol Khan Batyi. The Tatar nationalists hope that Khan Batyi, who was known for his devastating incursions into historical Russia and... MORE