At the beginning of November, Chechen authorities made several statements that were underreported by the media but which illuminated important aspects of Moscow’s policies in the North Caucasus. Moreover, those statements allow an assessment of how much autonomy Moscow is willing to grant to Chechnya... MORE

A month ago, during a state visit to Moscow by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the Russian government officially announced that an “arms trade package” worth $4.2 billion was agreed. The “package deal” reportedly included the purchase of 30 Mi-28N attack helicopters and 42 Pantsir-S1... MORE

According to the newspaper Kommersant, Russia agreed to provide military and technical support to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in the form of direct assistance. Russia is prepared to spend $1.1 billion to upgrade Kyrgyzstan’s army and another $200 million for the needs of the armed forces... MORE

On November 8, the International Crisis Group presented two reports—titled “The North Caucasus: The Challenges of Integration (I), Ethnicity and Conflict,” and “The North Caucasus: The Challenges of Integration (II), Islam, the Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency”—at the Sakharov Center in Moscow. Apart from the conflict in... MORE

It has become clear that China intends to wage a prolonged war of psychological attrition against Japan with regard to the disputed Senkaku Islands, a crisis with profound international repercussions. Russia’s position in this struggle, therefore, provides a revealing picture of its foreign policy goals... MORE

On November 1, Georgia’s new prime minister, the leader of the “Georgian Dream” coalition, Bidzina Ivanishvili, announced the creation of the position of the Prime Minister’s Special Representative for Relations with Russia. He appointed Zurab Abashidze, Georgia’s ambassador to Russia in 2000–2004, to the post... MORE

Russian psychiatrists are pressing the Duma to return the Soviet-era law on psychiatric assistance that allowed doctors at Moscow’s Serbsky Institute and elsewhere to indefinitely detain and treat people whose only “symptoms” were opposition to Soviet leaders and their policies. For more than 40 years,... MORE

To the relief and near jubilation of the Russian officer corps, President Vladimir Putin finally sacked his controversial Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov on November 6, replacing him with Sergei Shoigu. However, the initial Russian media frenzy that ensued masked the deeper reasons for Serdyukov’s dismissal... MORE

Since the Mongolian parliamentary elections of June 28, 2012, won by the pro-Western Democratic Party, there has been a re-emphasis on strengthening Mongolian-Russian political and military relations as part of the new government’s efforts to counter-balance China’s monopoly over Mongolia’s economy. On November 3, 2012,... MORE

One of the closest associates of Georgia’s Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, State Minister for Reintegration Paata Zakareishvili, has unveiled the government’s idea to unblock the railway link that connected Russia with the South Caucasus republics in Soviet times.In an interview with the Moscow paper Kommersant... MORE