The Kremlin has published an open letter to and about Ukraine, replete with insults and threats. An official public document in such a style seemed inconceivable in contemporary international relations, but the Kremlin has turned the inconceivable into fact with this letter. Published in the... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here.   A constant drumbeat of Russian propaganda and sensationalist international reporting has created the impression that Russia’s naval forces are much more formidable than is actually the case. This has convinced some Western decision-makers that any policy designed... MORE

Military exercises not only make known what a government believes could happen but become an occasion for its analysts and those in other countries to speculate as to what the outcomes of a real military conflict would be if the scenarios were to be applied... MORE

The Norwegian Nobel committee’s decision, announced last Friday (October 8), to award the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize to Novaya Gazeta Editor-in-Chief Dmitry Muratov as well as Philippine journalist Maria Ressa evoked astonishment, anger and elation across Russia. Muratov himself was astounded (he rejected the first... MORE

The Kremlin is skillfully exploiting a European energy crisis caused in part by flawed European policies. On October 6, at the TTF Hub in the Netherlands, the price of natural gas rose to an all-time European record of $1,936 per 1,000 cubic meters. Due to... MORE

On September 28, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB—one of the main successor organizations of the Soviet KGB) published an official order, Number 376, that lists some 60 ambiguous reference points covering all possible information about the state of battle readiness, location, structure and operations... MORE

Islamic State’s Canadian ‘Voice’ Facing Terrorism Charges in the U.S.    During Islamic State (IS)’s heyday, before the collapse of its ‘territorial caliphate’ in Iraq and Syria in 2019, a Saudi-born Canadian IS member, Mohamed Khalifa, became the main voice of IS by narrating numerous... MORE

One of the sensations of the September 17–19 elections in Russia—on the whole absolutely predictable—was the entry of the New People party into the State Duma (lower chamber of parliament). The faction received 5.32 percent of the vote and, accordingly, 13 deputy mandates. This is... MORE

In the last decade, Russia has increasingly sought to show off its muscles to the rest of the world. Extensive Russian propaganda has focused on purported successes in the country’s rearmament and military modernization programs, going some way toward convincing the West of the worsening... MORE

The range of issues on which Moscow and the Circassian nation are in conflict is expanding, and the Russian government, along with its agents in the Circassian republics and regions of the North Caucasus, have stepped up their efforts to block Circassian demands. In response,... MORE