On June 29, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) declared the emergence of an Islamic caliphate and renamed itself the Islamic State (IS). The organisation proclaimed that all existing Muslim states should support and provide their allegiances to the Caliphate, which according to... MORE

Mariupol illustrates the failure of Russia’s Novorossiya’s project to attract popular support in southeastern Ukraine. That project might have been expected to meet with success in many large cities, including Mariupol. This city of 500,000 (second-largest in the Donetsk province) is thoroughly Russified linguistically, closely... MORE

Russia opened its second front against Ukraine in late August on the Azov Sea coast, threatening to capture the port city of Mariupol (Donetsk region’s outlet to the sea), and potentially to link up with Crimea. The opening of this second front, coordinated with Russia’s... MORE

August 2014 turned out to be an ordinary month for the North Caucasus as there was no change in the fighting between the government and the insurgency. The insurgents staged attacks in Dagestan, Chechens fought in the ranks of the jihadists in Syria and Iraq.... MORE

One of the consequences of the Kremlin’s adventurism in Ukraine appears to have been an invigoration of European Far Right parties that sense an opportunity to orient themselves toward Moscow and achieve a champion on the world stage. A spate of recent and upcoming conferences... MORE

A pair of recent airstrikes against Islamist-held targets in the Libyan capital of Tripoli have raised questions about Arab military intervention in Libya after reports emerged claiming the strikes were conducted by United Arab Emirates (UAE) aircraft using Egyptian airbases. The first strike, on August... MORE

Before the June 30, 2013 coup that overthrew Muhammad Mursi, Egypt’s first civilian elected president, terrorist operations in Egypt were far fewer in number and scale, focusing mainly on blowing up gas pipelines supplying Egyptian gas to neighboring Israel. However, after the violent crackdown on... MORE

On August 26, the 3 + 1 + 1 summit devoted to the crisis in Ukraine took place in Minsk. Presidents of Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, as well as three European Commissioners attended the summit. While nobody expected a breakthrough regarding the war in... MORE

On August 24, the Russian-occupied Georgian region of Abkhazia held early presidential elections. Opposition leader Raul Khajimba, who helped to unseat the former “president,” Alexander Ankvab, following the May–June 2014 popular protests (see EDM, June 12), narrowly won with 50.57 percent of the total votes... MORE

On August 16, Rasul Gamzatov, the deputy mufti of North Ossetia and the imam of the Vladikavkaz mosque, was shot dead at the entrance of his apartment building. The murder, which took place shortly before midnight, was carried out by two unidentified young men who... MORE