In his annual address to the parliament, on December 1, President Vladimir Putin praised the Russian people for defying economic hardships, maintaining “patriotic” (i.e.: pro-Kremlin and pro-Putin) national unity, and for standing up to Western pressure. Putin sounded confident and sometimes triumphant: In Syria the... MORE

Russian President Vladimir Putin has approved an agreement to establish a joint Russo-Armenian military unit, which will include troops of the 102nd Russian military base stationed near Yerevan as well as the 4th Corps of the Armenian Army. The unit’s commander is to be appointed... MORE

The Russian mass media (with a reference to the Reuters news agency) reported, on November 11, that Russian hackers launched a series of cyberattacks against analytical centers and think tanks inside the United States (Rosbalt.ru, November 11). This may have been carried out by the... MORE

Several Arabic news agencies reported, on November 21, that Chechnya’s ruler, Ramzan Kadyrov, had apologized to the Saudis for condemning Salafism. News sources said that Kadyrov planned to visit Saudi Arabia to hold talks with government officials. In clarifying his earlier critical remarks, the Chechen... MORE

Tatarstan has long been considered the bellwether of nationality relations inside Russia. The republic has arguably held this status since at least 1920, when Joseph Stalin—then Soviet Commissar for Nationalities Affairs—engaged in his first act of ethnic engineering by dividing up the Turkic peoples of... MORE

Ever since Soviet Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov first wrote about the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) 40 years ago, Moscow has looked to build weapons based upon what he called “new physical principles” to compete with the West. That determination is no less present today. Notably,... MORE

President Vladimir Putin is scheduled, this Thursday, December 1, to deliver his annual address to the Federal Assembly (upper chamber of the Russian parliament)—and he is short on patriotism-boosting success stories in foreign policy. The conflict in Ukraine is not quite frozen, but it is... MORE

At an October 31 meeting of the Interethnic Relations Council, President Vladimir Putin approved the idea to adopt the “Law on the Russian Nation” (rossiyskaya natsiya), which would legally define the term (Kremlin.ru, October 31). This proposal, and its potential legalistic consequences for the country’s... MORE

The arrest (on November 15) of Alexei Ulyukaev (60), the minister of economic development of the Russian Federation, dominated the news coming out of Moscow this week. Ulyukaev is accused of soliciting a $2 million bribe from Rosneft—Russia’s largest state-owned oil major. Ulyukaev was promptly... MORE

The Russian government killed or expelled nearly the entire Circassian nation from the North Caucasus in 1864, after this group resisted the Russian Empire’s advance there for more than a century. To this day, the Circassians remember this as their “genocide.” Now, the Russian government... MORE