The two telephone conversations between United States President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 2 and February 22 marked a dramatic deterioration of relations caused by the near-complete collapse of common ground in managing the crisis in Ukraine. The first discussion about... MORE

In the past week, many people in Chechnya saw an anonymous video of clashes at the administrative border between Chechnya and Ingushetia. The video was apparently recorded by a Chechen police officer, but the authorities, trying to conceal the clashes from the public, disliked the... MORE

As of at least Friday, February 28, unmarked Russian tanks are reportedly moving through the streets of Simferopol, the administrative capital of Crimea (https://guzei.com/online_tv/watch.php?online_tv_id=4919). The crisis situation on this Ukrainian peninsula, populated by majority ethnic Russians, has been escalating for the past several days. On... MORE

In the pre-dawn hours on February 27 in Simferopol, some 50 heavily armed Russian men in camouflage uniforms without identification marks seized the parliament and government buildings of the Crimean Autonomous Republic, which forms a part of Ukraine. That squad is presumed to be Russian... MORE

As the eyes of the world were riveted to the unfolding crisis in Ukraine, where weeks of violent street protests recently brought down the corrupt regime of former president Viktor Yanukovych, Russian-Kazakhstani relations have endured another test. On February 20, the founder and former leader... MORE

An unexpected breakthrough emerged in the stalled investigations of several mysterious international murders of Chechens with ties to the Caucasus Emirate in 2008–2012. The news concerns a person who simultaneously worked for the security services of several countries—Russia, Georgia and Turkey.  A kind of James... MORE

The sudden meltdown of President Viktor Yanukovych’s regime in Kyiv last week has surprised the Kremlin. On Wednesday February 19, during the height of the bloodbath in Kyiv, when dozens of people were shot dead and hundreds wounded, the Kremlin-financed news website Vzglad was calling... MORE

A large rally of Terek Cossacks took place in the city of Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia, on February 16. The Cossack organizations stated they would join forces with other ethnic-Russian organizations to thwart the draining of the ethnic-Russian population from the North Caucasus (https://www.apn.ru/publications/article31077.htm). “Gathering the... MORE

Vladislav Surkov, the Kremlin’s overseer of the breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and a man who recently discussed building a bridge between Russia and Crimea that could serve as the basis for a possible move by Moscow against that part of Ukraine, recently... MORE

Russian views concerning various global security crises and political revolutions in recent years differ widely from the views of their counterparts in Europe or the United States, ranging from the Arab Spring to recent events in Ukraine. Yet such differences also exist—though by no means... MORE