Muslim al-Shishani is the nom de guerre of Murad Margoshvili, commander of the Junud al-Sham (“Soldiers of Syria”) insurgent group operating in Syria. Margoshivili is a Georgian national, but he is also an ethnic Kist, a member of the Chechen sub-ethnic group that lives in... MORE

Giorgi Vashadze, a high-ranking member of Georgia’s formerly ruling United National Movement (UNM) and a member of the Georgian parliament, left his political party on May 5. Immediately, he unleashed harsh criticism for the organization to which he had pledged his allegiance for more than... MORE

In recent months, the Federal Security Service (FSB) allegedly thwarted several terrorist attacks on Russian soil by migrants from Central Asia. In April, Russian security services claimed that four citizens of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan were planning terrorist acts in Moscow (Kommersant, May 6), while in... MORE

A recent police operation against militants in the Dagestani city of Derbent was so bloody that even the Islamic State (IS) mentioned it. The clash started as police were checking out several homes after receiving a tip concerning the whereabouts of Bairamali Abasov, the leader... MORE

On May 15, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kirill, visited Kabardino-Balkaria for the first time. He was greeted in the republic with great pomp. The top Russian Orthodox cleric consecrated the Cathedral of Mary Magdalene and held a liturgy in Nalchik, the republic’s... MORE

Five and a half years after the 2010 presidential elections, which culminated in street protests, violence, police crackdowns and Western sanctions on Belarus, the intensity of both official and unofficial contacts between Minsk and the West are at an all-time high. One telling recent example... MORE

Less than five years have passed since Kazakhstan experienced what may have been its most serious post-independence test of stability to date when, in December 2011, hundreds of people took to the streets in the western town of Zhanaozen, on the Caspian Sea. Clashes with... MORE

The recent decision of the Dagestani Spiritual Board of Muslims to participate in the parliamentary elections in the republic has reverberated across the region. The board plans to use the political party Narod Protiv Corruptsii (People Against Corruption) as their electoral vehicle. The first deputy... MORE

The ceremony of opening the United States’ missile defense base in Deveselu, Romania, last week (Thursday, May 12), was greeted by a barrage of condemnation and criticism from Russian officials (see EDM, May 12). The next day, President Vladimir Putin turned these denouncements into state... MORE

In late April, Federation Council Chairperson Valentina Matviyenko proposed uniting a number of Russian regions into fewer, larger ones (TASS, April 24). This proposal should be understood against the background of a series of recent domestic security–related initiatives by the Russian authorities—namely, the creation of... MORE