After annexing Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, Russia is now rebuilding its Black Sea Fleet (BSF) to ensure its regional dominance, to exclude all rivals, and to lay the foundation for further external power projection, threatening other littorals like Romania and Bulgaria. In April 2014, Putin directed... MORE

Chechens have been quite active in the ranks of the armed opposition to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over the past two to three years. Chechens have formed several groups that made waves in a country that is alien to them, both culturally and linguistically, as... MORE

Ukraine’s law on the “special procedure of local self-administration in individual districts in the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces” (Ukraiynska Pravda, September 16; see Part One of this article) seeks to retain at least some means of influence and avenues of dialogue between Kyiv and local... MORE

On September 16, the Ukrainian parliament approved a “Law on the special procedure of local self-administration in individual districts in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk provinces” (Russian version’s terminology: poryadok, samo-upravlenie, raiony). Those two provinces of Ukraine are now, de facto, partitioned into Russian-controlled and Ukrainian-controlled... MORE

Persistent rumors have existed for some time about the involvement of Chechens in pro-Russian military groups fighting in eastern Ukraine (see EDM, July 18). A significant portion of the information about Chechens fighting in Ukraine was unverified; indeed, it sometimes seemed the Ukrainian army was... MORE

The Russian business community was shocked by the arrest this week (September 16) of one of Russia’s richest industrialists—billionaire-tycoon Vladimir Yevtushenkov (65), accused of money laundering. In 2009, Yevtushenkov acquired Bashneft, a major oil and petrochemical company. Prosecutors allege Bashneft was illegally privatized by Ural... MORE

On September 7, representatives of the Turkish government-owned company Caykur met with North Ossetia’s Prime Minister Sergei Takoev to discuss an investment project in the Russian republic. Caykur applied for a swath of land in North Ossetia on which to build a tea packing plant... MORE

Russia’s war against Ukraine is a multi-dimensional conflict undertaking. It has come to a standstill on the battlefield in Ukraine, but continues nonetheless in its military aspect (below the combat threshold) and in its political, economic, propaganda, and cultural aspects. Russia’s overall objective is to... MORE

In the wake of worsening Russian-Western relations over Ukraine, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is holding Rapid Trident military exercises, on September 16–26, in Ukraine near Lviv. According to European Command (EUCOM) spokesman Gregory Hicks, the drills will bring together about 1,300 troops from... MORE

Mihai Balan, director of Moldova’s Intelligence and Security Service (SIS), says the organization has evidence that Moscow is planning to stage provocations in his country in the coming weeks, in advance of the Moldovan November parliamentary elections. Russia will utilize not only traditional sources of... MORE