On September 15, an Ingush insurgent leader claimed responsibility for planning the September 9 suicide bombing at the central market in Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia. According to the leader of Ingush sector, named Adam, the attack was carried out by the Riyadus Salikhin battalion. Calling the... MORE

Russian authorities have voiced their support for the country’s state-run energy giants in their possible bids to take over BP’s holdings in Russia. The maneuverings came as yet another sign of the government’s drive towards strengthening the state’s grip on domestic energy assets. Earlier this... MORE

On September 15 in Murmansk, the Russian and Norwegian foreign affairs ministers, Sergei Lavrov and Jonas Gahr Store, signed a bilateral treaty on delimitation of maritime jurisdictions and cooperation in the Barents Sea and the Arctic Ocean. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Jens... MORE

London-based Chechen rebel envoy Akhmed Zakaev was arrested today (September 17) in Poland, where he had traveled to attend the World Congress of the Chechen People taking place in Warsaw on September 16-18. A Polish police spokesman told Reuters that Zakaev, who was granted political... MORE

Buried in this year’s Europol report on terrorism trends was a reference to “a 20 year-old Lithuanian woman” who was “arrested before she traveled to Russia to commit a suicide attack there. She had converted to Islam and was self-radicalized via the internet” (for the... MORE

Just four days after the September 5 suicide bombing in Buinaksk, Dagestan, reportedly carried out by Zamir Terekbaev, a 26-year-old resident of the village of Andrei-Kurgan in the Neftekumsky district of Russia’s Stavropol region, originally from Dagestan, a powerful blast rocked Vladikavkaz, the capital of... MORE

Fundamental differences have emerged in talks on a joint venture between Russia’s Gazprom and the Naftohaz Ukrainy national oil and gas company. Not only do Kyiv and Moscow differ on which assets the joint venture should be based on and on the gas price issue,... MORE

“CORF [Collective Operational Reaction forces] will be no worse than NATO,” claimed Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, only one year ago. Today, these words are used in Russia to popularize the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the CORF within the post-Soviet space. They are also... MORE

On September 13, Russian Defense Minister, Anatoliy Serdyukov, and his Kyrgyz counterpart, Abibilla Kudayberdiyev, discussed the possibility of opening a Russian military training center in the southern city of Osh. The proposal comes almost one year after Washington and Bishkek began discussing the possibility of... MORE

On September 11, a police armored truck and a gas pipeline were blown up in the Elbrus district, located in the mountainous part of Kabardino-Balkaria. The attack left five servicemen injured and several settlements without gas supplies (ITAR-TASS, September 11). The strength of the blast... MORE