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

Activists in Chuvashia, Tatarstan and Bashkortostan went into the streets of the republic capitals on Saturday, December 1, with signs demanding that Moscow end its plans to drop obligatory instruction in their national languages for all students in the non-Russian republics and issuing an appeal... MORE

On November 16, Russia’s Federal Security Service announced it had intercepted a channel that supplied gold from Russia’s north to Ingushetia. The security services confiscated over 17 kilograms of gold from an unnamed individual in the city of Kazan, Tatarstan. The same individual, a resident... MORE

Winter hit Moscow furiously in the last days of November causing colossal traffic jams, but the political climate remains hot as if the electoral season and the government reshuffle did not end in May. President Vladimir Putin announced plans for several trips and scheduled the... MORE

After a year of encouraging progress in the refitting of a late Soviet–era carrier, which Russia plans to sell to India, the vessel’s latest sea trials in September 2012 ended in failure and disappointment. The discouraging results point to substantial structural problems in Russia’s domestic... MORE

Since the end of Soviet times, the percentage of ethnic Russians in the Circassian republic of Adygea has fallen from 78 percent to 52 percent, the result of the dominance of the minority Circassians in republic institutions and the failure of Moscow to address the... MORE