In September 2012, Russia carried out sea trials of the retired Soviet-era heavy carrier “Sergei Gorshkov,” which it is retrofitting and selling to India. The results of the sea trial of the carrier, which the Indians will rechristen the Vikramaditya, ended in embarrassing failure and... MORE

Having failed to defeat the armed resistance, the Dagestani authorities decided to look for help by finding favorable interpretations of Sharia law among foreign scholars. The republican authorities certainly received official consent from Moscow for their quest abroad (https://russian.irib.ir/radioislam/2010-08-31-12-33-40/2010-09-09-08-01-11/item/156021-%D0%B2). Their efforts resulted in the condemnation... MORE

According to recent census results, the rate of the overall decline in the population of the Russian Federation nearly doubled during the past decade compared to the rate over the course of the 1990s, but that trend obscures rather than highlights three more important developments:... MORE

A month ago on November 6, President Vladimir Putin sacked Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, replacing him with Sergei Shoigu, a former long-time emergency situations minister (MChS), who was only last May appointed governor of the Moscow region. Russia’s top general—the first deputy defense minister and... MORE

The new Georgian government’s decision to resume broadcast of Russian television channels may be among the most important recent moves by the country’s leadership (https://www.vestikavkaza.ru/articles/Vernutsya-li-rossiyskie-telekanaly-v-Gruziyu.html). The previous government suspended Russian television broadcasts in Georgia in August 2008. Now some cable companies in Georgia have again... MORE

On December 2, over 100 people held a rally in downtown Moscow in support of Syria’s Circassians. The participants called on the Russian government to intervene and allow the estimated 100,000 ethnic Circassians who live in Syria to repatriate to the Russian North Caucasus. The... MORE

Russia’s gas monopoly, Gazprom, has apparently ruled out the possibility of building a subsea Sakhalin-Japan natural gas pipeline. However, the continuation of talks on this ambitious project is thought to remain a valuable bargaining instrument in Russia’s difficult negotiations with China on gas prices.On November... MORE

On November 29, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, in response to the new Georgian government’s attempts to normalize ties with Russia, declared that Moscow was ready for dialogue with Tbilisi. However, the talks would progress on the condition that Georgia takes into consideration new geopolitical... MORE

Since Moscow ordered the reform and modernization of its conventional Armed Forces in the fall of 2008, at the heart of what became an increasingly obscure transformation program was the improvement of command and control (C2). This resulted in simplifying C2 structures, particularly reducing the... MORE

On November 15, Head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov began his two-day visit to Baku. This was the second visit of the Chechen leader to Baku in the last couple of years. Despite the fact that Kadyrov faces heavy criticism in Europe and the United States... MORE