On April 12-13, high-profile experts close to the Russian government participated in a conference on the North Caucasus in the city of Pyatigorsk, the seat of the Moscow’s envoy to the region, Aleksandr Khloponin. A deputy to Khloponin, Yuri Oleinikov, stated that the administration had... MORE

Orthodox Easter was celebrated in Russia last Sunday with all the ceremonial pomp and official hypocrisy, but it has hardly produced any calming effect on the brewing political crisis. Ahead of his return to the Kremlin, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s last official address to the... MORE

Security forces in Ingushetia launched a special operation today (April 13) in a portion of the republic’s Sunzha district where a group of militants was reportedly encircled. A group of around ten alleged militants were reportedly blockaded yesterday (April 12) in a wooded area near... MORE

The latest top-level meetings of post-Soviet regional groupings, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), pledged to intensify joint efforts to counter security and economic challenges. However, despite continued Russian efforts to sustain the groupings’ unity, the CIS and... MORE

President-elect Vladimir Putin is still legally Prime Minister until his inauguration on May 7. As Prime Minister, Putin is required to present to the Duma (the lower house of parliament) an annual “report of government activities.” Putin has limited his appearances in parliament to the... MORE

No one could have predicted a scandal would erupt when, on April 3, the Russian National Anti-Terrorist Committee (NAK) reported that security forces had killed five rebels in Ingushetia’s main city, Nazran. The authorities acknowledged there was a woman among the slain rebels. According to... MORE

Moscow has again proposed formal multilateral cooperation with NATO. On April 6, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov arrived in Astana to attend the council of foreign ministers of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), ahead of the CSTO summit in Moscow on May 15. Lavrov... MORE

On April 6, the president of Dagestan, Magomedsalam Magomedov, met with Russian Deputy Interior Minister Sergei Gerasimov in Makhachkala. The chief police official of the North Caucasus Federal District, Sergei Chenchik, and the chief of the Russian Interior Ministry’s police aviation and special units, Vladimir... MORE

A major advantage of the scheme for consensual rotation between Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitri Medvedev by the means of presidential elections was supposed to be a low intensity of infighting in the common court over which they jointly rule. It has not... MORE

Suspected militants have attacked police in Kabardino-Balkaria and Ingushetia, with the latter republic experiencing a recent uptick in insurgency-related violence.In Kabardino-Balkaria today (April 6), two suspected rebels who attacked a police officer were killed in a special operation in Nalchik. According to local authorities, the... MORE