Russian observers reacted quite strongly to an Internet video released by the Islamic State, the group formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) that is operating in Iraq and Syria as well as Lebanese border areas, in which militants are threatening... MORE

On September 5, Ukraine, Russia, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and leaders of the Moscow-backed separatist “governments” signed an armistice agreement in Minsk. The armistice protocol’s Point 4 envisages a “permanent monitoring [of the situation] along the border between Russia and... MORE

The ceasefire agreement signed in Minsk, on September 5, by representatives of Ukraine, Russia and Moscow-backed rebels operating in Ukraine’s Donbas region (area including Luhansk and Donetsk provinces) seems to be holding. Yet, serious problems of implementation persist among the different parties to the somewhat... MORE

At the end of July, the governor of Adygea, Aslan Tkhakushinov, and the chief of the Kuban Cossack Forces, Nikolai Doluda, unexpectedly announced that the Cossacks would start conducting public safety patrols in the republic. The Kuban Cossack Forces are based in Krasnodar region and... MORE

Amid the continuous stream of news coming out of eastern Ukraine—not least the post-modern invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces—the upcoming regional elections in Russia have largely escaped notice. Elections for regional legislatures and governors were reinstated by then-president Dmitry Medvedev, partly to meet protesters’... MORE

Ukraine has been “coerced to peace” by Russia after five months of hostilities, as Georgia was in 2008 after five days. Russia’s hybrid war methods, rehearsed already against Georgia and deployed fully against Ukraine, proved indecisive, until Russia escalated to the level of conventional war... MORE

This week (September 7), more than 300 Cossacks, Russian Orthodox hierarchs, Moscow officials, and researchers assembled in the Russian North Caucasus city of Stavropol. They gathered to discuss the enormous and ever increasing gap between the way Cossacks are presented in the Russian and international... MORE

Russian President Vladimir Putin undoubtedly timed the coordinated effort to initiate a ceasefire in southeastern Ukraine to coincide with both the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) September 4-5 summit in Newport, Wales, and the European Union’s threat of additional sanctions against his country. However, due... MORE

The Ukrainian crisis has overshadowed the continuing low-level insurgency in Russia’s North Caucasus. Besides shifting public attention, the conflict in Ukraine is evidently shifting Russian forces from the volatile region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. For years, the best combat-ready Russian forces... MORE

Mariupol illustrates the failure of Russia’s Novorossiya’s project to attract popular support in southeastern Ukraine. That project might have been expected to meet with success in many large cities, including Mariupol. This city of 500,000 (second-largest in the Donetsk province) is thoroughly Russified linguistically, closely... MORE