Federal Security Service (FSB) Director Alexander Bortnikov, who is also chairman of the Russian National Antiterrorist Committee (NAK) and has chaired the Council of Heads of Security Agencies of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries since 2008, has made another triumphant statement. He declared... MORE

The secessionist “Luhansk People’s Republic’s” (LPR) leadership is experiencing even greater turmoil, compared with that of the adjacent “Donetsk People’s Republic” (DPR) in Ukraine’s east. On August 14 the “head (glava) of the republic,” Valery Bolotov, returned to Luhansk after a Moscow visit and announced... MORE

On August 14–15, the “Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) government” and its military command underwent another recasting—the second within one week, while Ukrainian forces tighten the ring around the city of Donetsk. Colonel Igor Strelkov/Girkin, a hero to Russia’s nationalist public, has now been stripped of... MORE

With the approach of the 15th anniversary of the Islamic militants’ incursion into Dagestan in 1999, it appears that the militants have only grown stronger since then, and their activities have become a daily routine in the republic. August in Dagestan began with a bombing... MORE

At the end of July, Ukrainian border guards reported three instances of reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) from Transnistria violating Ukrainian air space (korrespondent.net, August, 1). The drones were seen over the administrative border area between Ukraine’s regions of Odessa and Vinnitsya, as well as... MORE

Russian State Duma deputy in the Committee on Defense Viktor Vodolatsky, who is also the supreme ataman (head) of the Union of Cossack Forces in Russia and Abroad, openly admitted that Russian Cossacks are actively engaged in the Ukrainian conflict on the side of the... MORE

The newly-installed “prime minister of the Donetsk people’s republic (DPR),” Aleksandr Zakharchenko, was apparently asked to convey a reassuring message to Russia’s public in anticipation of a Ukrainian siege of the city of Donetsk. Following six weeks of military reverses and shrinkage of “DPR’s” territory,... MORE

The role of Russia’s Armed Forces and its proxies in Ukraine has been subject to much speculation. Throughout the crisis, the Kremlin has pursued a course of “plausible deniability” in its use of hard power, or kept the threat of large-scale invasion lurking in the... MORE

Building a giant version of Transnistria in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk provinces (Donbas) is Russia’s current policy, but it was not its start-off option. It became a fall-back plan when Moscow’s even more ambitious “Novorossiya” project failed (at least temporarily) in the other six provinces... MORE

A high level of secrecy was the defining feature of the Chechen militants under the command of Doku Umarov. Even news of the split within the Chechen insurgency’s ranks was transmitted mainly by the neighboring jamaats, rather than by the Chechens. This situation has radically... MORE