Earlier this month, on the official June 12 “Russia Day” holiday, President Vladimir Putin was nominated leader of the Popular Front. The Front was established in 2011 to supplement the traditional party of power, United Russia (UR). But at the same time, the Front was... MORE

In less than a year, the Caucasus Emirate’s leaders have reversed their position on whether or not to view the uprising in Syria as a sacred jihad. The leader of the North Caucasian jihadist movement, Doku Umarov, spoke rather ambiguously in a video address last... MORE

Three years ago—on June 9, 2010—Russian authorities made a surprise announcement that one of the most significant and influential figures in the armed resistance in the North Caucasus, Emir Magas (a.k.a. Ali Taziev, Magomed Yevloev), had been captured alive and in good health (www.kp.ru/daily/24504/656718/). His... MORE

Edward Snowden, the contractor who worked as a systems administrator at a United States National Security Agency (NSA) facility in Hawaii, apparently flew into Moscow from Hong Kong on Sunday, June 23, and had a ticket booked to fly Aeroflot to Havana on June 24,... MORE

On June 19, a well-known Kabardino-Balkarian businessman, Albert Nazranov, was murdered in Moscow. An unidentified killer riding a bicycle shot him several times. Nazranov won notoriety in Kabardino-Balkaria as a close ally of the head of the republic, Arsen Kanokov. Nazranov was reportedly Kanokov’s “right... MORE

The Center for Strategic Studies under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SAM) and Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) hosted a conference this month in Baku on “Cooperation in the Caspian Region: National Perspectives and Common Challenges.” In his conference keynote speech, SAM director... MORE

Dagestan’s head Ramazan Abulatipov said in an interview with Kommersant-FM Radio on June 20, while attending the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, that the new leadership of the republic regarded its economic development as the necessary condition for resolving its problems. In the interview, Abdulatipov said... MORE

The annual St. Petersburg economic forum provided for President Vladimir Putin a perfect retreat from the deadlocked debates on negotiating a ‘political solution’ for the civil war in Syria as well as from the US President Barack Obama’s persistent – and, from the Kremlin’s point... MORE

The Barack Obama Administration’s first-term “reset” of the United States’ relations with Russia set in motion a trend in Europe. A number of European governments have adapted the US-Russia “reset” model to their specific situations, initiating similar processes bilaterally with Russia. In Western Europe, such... MORE

The administration of Ingush leader Yunus-Bek Yevkurov is trying to portray the dynamic that is occurring in the republic as positive. As often happens in the North Caucasus, republican leaders tend to claim the achievements of the federal agencies as their own. In this case,... MORE