With the start of a new year, the situation involving the militarized Islamic jamaat of Kabarda, Balkaria and Karachai (KBK), which operates in two North Caucasian republics, Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachaevo-Cherkessia, remains unclear. When Caucasus Emirate (CE) militants started to switch allegiance to the Islamic State... MORE

It has become a cliché to write off President Vladimir Putin’s anti-Western pitches as only intended for internal consumption—uttered to rally the population around the Kremlin and dampen possible social discontent in times of economic and financial strain. However, in a recent interview for the... MORE

Russia’s Muslims are slowly realizing that they have a voice in the country’s foreign policy in the Middle East. President Vladimir Putin unexpectedly launched a military campaign in Syria in the fall of 2015, apparently giving little consideration to Russia’s Muslim population. Indeed, Moscow threw... MORE

The New Year brought new challenges and opportunities to Russian policy in East Asia. On January 3, 2016, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe signaled Japan’s continuing interest in a summit with Russia to normalize bilateral relations (TASS, January 4), even though both sides had given... MORE

Russia’s new National Security Strategy (NSS), signed into law by President Vladimir Putin on December 31, 2015, marks the culmination of a long process in deteriorating relations between Moscow and Washington and in how the Russian security elite perceives the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).... MORE

At the end of December, President Vladimir Putin unexpectedly ordered his cabinet to transfer the ownership of a large oil and gas company in Chechnya, Chechenneftekhimprom, from federal control to that of the Chechen government. According to the newspaper Kommersant, Chechnya’s head, Ramzan Kadyrov, made... MORE

This Monday (January 11), Russia begins its traditionally delayed entry into the new year without any breaking geopolitical news but with an unusually dark economic outlook. Throughout the whole, lengthy, Russian festive season, there were no reports of airstrikes in Syria but plenty of news... MORE

Russia and Belarus have some of the closest relations in the post-Soviet space. Both are members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), and the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). And together, the two countries make up the Union State.... MORE

In 2015, Russia changed its assessment of threats, shifting its focus from the Caucasus Emirate to members of the so-called Islamic State (IS). The Russian government’s concern is not so much about the numbers of people who went to Syria and may return, but rather... MORE

Events in the North Caucasus in 2015 showed that the insurgency in the region continued to decline—a trend first noted in 2011. No official figures on insurgent violence are yet available, but they are likely to be about 50 percent lower than in 2014. For... MORE