The Barack Obama administration has been doing its best to befriend President Vladimir Putin’s regime, but seems to be failing. Despite intensive attempts by Europe, the United States and Israel to prevent Russian shipments of advanced S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Syria, President Bashar al-Assad announced... MORE

On May 14, Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited Russia’s 7th military base in Gudauta, in the Georgian breakaway region of Abkhazia. At the base, Shoigu toured a Russian military sanatorium and parking lot under construction, which is planned to house current and incoming military... MORE

On April 26, the authoritative Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta hosted a roundtable of experts on the situation in Syria. Although almost all the experts, as usual, accused the United States and the West of fueling civil unrest in Syria now and Libya and Yugoslavia in... MORE

On May 21, Circassians worldwide marked the 149th anniversary of the end of the Russo-Caucasian war. In the North Caucasus, the largest republic with a Circassian population, Kabardino-Balkaria, held multiple events marking the anniversary. Hundreds of young people staged a procession in the republic’s capital,... MORE

A conference on European security, organized by the Russian defense ministry on May 23–24 in Moscow, served as a platform for the top brass to reiterate well-worn themes and perspectives on a range of issues: from the United States’ ballistic missile defense (BMD) system to... MORE

The armed conflict in the North Caucasus continues to kill and maim (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/224400/). Murders, kidnappings and explosions have become the daily routine in this part of Russia. Only suicide bombings carried out by the armed resistance groups provide a slightly different picture. Neither side of... MORE

In his childhood, Vladislav Surkov, an ethnic Chechen by birth, initially had his father’s surname, Dudaev—a surname that is related to the Zandak teip (clan) (www.anticompromat.org/surkov/surkbio.html). However, with Russian first and last names, he managed to achieve not simply a breathtaking career, but to become... MORE

Vladimir Putin’s third presidential term began on May 7, 2012, and has been dominated by an increasingly vicious campaign of suppression of civil society and of any public manifestations of political dissent. Human rights and non-governmental advocacy groups are being labeled “foreign agents”—essentially spies for... MORE

Tatar and Bashkir civil organizations are moving toward the forging of an alliance, regional and Russian experts say. “Bashkir nationalists have tried to find support among Tatar and Ugro-Finnish nationalists for several years, but their attempts were unsuccessful,” Bashkir analyst Ed Murzin told the Regnum... MORE

Six months after his appointment as Russia’s defense minister, Army-General Sergei Shoigu has initiated a number of policy reversals in key areas of his predecessor’s Armed Forces reform. Some of these changes were small measures, however in a number of his recent actions Shoigu has... MORE