In the past year, significant changes took place in the armed Islamic resistance in the North Caucasus. The Chechen factor proved to be a problem that cut across international boundaries to become a worldwide issue. Change in the Leadership of the Armed Resistance The death... MORE

The armistice in Ukraine’s east affords Russia a breathing pause to institutionalize the secessionist Luhansk and Donetsk “people’s republics.” The “Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR)” is even less institutionalized and more chaotic than the nearby Donetsk republic (“DPR”). Various armed formations in the “LPR” are operating,... MORE

On January 1, 2015, a military unit of the “Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR)” ambushed and killed the commander of the LPR’s rapid-reaction battalion, Lieutenant-Colonel Aleksandr Bednov (“Batman”) and six of his men. They were shelled from both sides of the road while traveling in two... MORE

Analysts have believed that the Islamic State (IS) organization would dispatch people to the North Caucasus and include the region in its sphere of influence. The reality appears to be much simpler: the IS came to the North Caucasus through members of the Caucasus Emirate... MORE

The last two weeks in Russia were a nonstop holiday, which only ends on January 12, when the nation returns to work as usual. The banks and the stock exchange will reopen, and no one is expecting anything good to happen: The price of oil... MORE

In the second half of December 2014, five interrelated themes engaged media attention: the last salvos of the Belarus-Russia trade war (see EDM, December 3, 2014); Russia’s reactions to Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s statements regarding this war and his trip to Kyiv; Lukashenka’s speech at... MORE

The much-anticipated verdict of Russian opposition blogger Aleksei Navalny, was unexpectedly moved up from its scheduled reading date of January 15, 2015, and was instead read on December 30, 2014, at the Zamoroveskom court in Moscow. Navalny, one of the leaders of the 2011–2012 mass... MORE

Russian experts say that the Cossack organizations in the North Caucasus are increasingly split and mired in conflicts with each other. The reasons usually given for the internal conflicts among the Cossacks is the government’s inability to organize them, or their own inability to organize... MORE

Following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its intervention in other parts of Ukraine, many in Central Asia and beyond concluded that the foreign and domestic policies of the five Central Asian countries would be radically and irreversibly changed by those events. Some saw Moscow’s actions... MORE

Moscow published its new Military Doctrine on December 26, 2014 (Kremlin.ru, December 26, 2014). And without going into the details (see accompanying article), clearly this document reflects the mentality of a state under siege on all fronts. Moreover, almost all of the multiple threats listed... MORE