Executive Summary: To avoid mass mobilization, Moscow has called on Russian regions to start forming “volunteer battalions” to assist and even act in place of the regular armed forces. Battalions have formed in the North Caucasus, a region that suffered disproportionately high losses at the... MORE

Executive Summary: Since February 2022, underground militants in the North Caucasus have avoided going on the offensive, but recent events in the region suggest these groups have changed their minds. Militants in the North Caucasus are becoming more active—a development that Moscow blames on Ukraine... MORE

Executive Summary: Moscow recently carried out a counterterrorism operation against what it describes as Islamist radicals in Ingushetia—the smallest, poorest, and arguably most restive republic not only in the North Caucasus but also in the Russian Federation. The Kremlin took this step lest violence in... MORE

Russia’s war against Ukraine has significantly altered the geopolitical terrain of Eastern Europe, and its repercussions have extended into the North Caucasus. One of the most notable consequences has been the reawakening of aspirations for independence among the dozens of ethnic groups that populate the... MORE

Russian President Vladimir Putin called for a high-level meeting of security officials immediately following the recent anti-Israeli riots in Dagestan and elsewhere in the North Caucasus. Putin’s move is one of only a few indications that Moscow is concerned with the unrest (MR7.ru, November 5).... MORE

Anti-Semitic demonstrations in various cities in the North Caucasus marked the end of October. On October 29, in Dagestan, several hundred people broke into the Flamingo Hotel in Khasavyurt demanding the removal of Jews who had recently arrived from Israel (Ura.news, October 29). On the... MORE

For the first time since the Russian Civil War (November 1917–June 1923), commentators in Russia and abroad are applying the word “pogrom” to the startling events in Russia that began at the end of October. These developments took place not only in Dagestan but also... MORE

Reading into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions in the aftermath of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny is comparable to entering a baffling alternate universe where messages are sent with symbols, cues and nonverbal communication (Medialeaks.ru; T.me/strelkovii, June 29). Take, for example, the Russian president’s first post-coup visit, which... MORE

After a brief easing following the Sochi Olympics in 2014, which elevated attention on the Circassian issue to the global level, tensions between Moscow and the Circassians ebbed during the first part of the past decade only to rise again at its end (see EDM,... MORE

May 21 marks the anniversary of the 1864 expulsion of the Circassians from their North Caucasus homeland after more than a century of resistance to Russian imperial expansion, an action most Circassians and many others consider an act of genocide. It is the most important... MORE