Moscow Wants to Block Those Suspected of Extremism from Leaving the Country 2016-03-22 19:58:24 Staunton, VA, March 21, 2016 – For five centuries, Russian leaders have been obsessed about emigres, defectors and others who have gone abroad and broken with the Russian regime, fearful of the ability of such people to influence Russians within Russia and […]
A border guard has been killed and 11 people injured in a shooting in Derbent, Dagestan at the ancient fortress of Naryn-kala. ISIS has taken responsibility for the attack. Welcome to our column, Russia Update, where we will be closely following day-to-day developments in Russia, including the Russian government’s foreign and domestic policies. The previous […]
Live Updates: Officers of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and Interior Ministry killed a leader of a terrorist group in Dagestan today during a raid, bringing the total killed this year to 160. Welcome to our column, Russia Update, where we will be closely following day-to-day developments in Russia, including the Russian government’s foreign and […]
Staunton, May 27 – The leaders of the Caucasus Emirate have declared themselves part of ISIS, but such declarations, given that many Salafis in the North Caucasus view ISIS as not being an Islamic project — an attitude Russian officials need to promote and exploit — may have the effect of weakening the group there, […]
Staunton, April 14 – While Russians have been focusing on Ukraine, the situation in the North Caucasus has deteriorated in two important ways, according to Maya Astvatsaturova. On the one hand, disputes of any kind are increasingly invested with ethnic meaning. And on the other, young people are better armed and ready to use guns […]
Welcome to our column, Russia Update, where we will be closely following day-to-day developments in Russia, including the Russian government’s foreign and domestic policies. The previous issue is here, and see also our Russia This Week story The Guild War – How Should Journalists Treat Russian State Propagandists? and special features ‘Managed Spring’: How Moscow […]
On December 4, hours before Putin was to give a defiant speech about Russia being surrounded by enemies and defeating any attempts to divide it, terrorists conducted an impeccably-timed and surprising attack in the manicured capital of the former war torn republic of Chechnya, Grozny. Despite claims from Ramzan Kadyrov—Chechnya’s social media obsessed overlord— that […]
Staunton, December 6 – The violence in Chechnya this week has led many Russian and Western commentators to suggest that the unrest there is about to spread to other parts of the North Caucasus, but such analyses are wrong: unrest throughout the region has been there all along. It has only been exacerbated in recent […]
The militants from Doku Umarov’s gang were taken out at the end of last year, according to the statement by Director of the Russian FSB Alexander Bortnikov reported by RIA Novosti. “This mission, I told you about, was accomplished at the end of last year,” said Bortnikov. “In due time we will inform the public […]
Readers might get the idea that the number of terrorist attacks in Russia is increasing because of a series of well-publicized suicide bombings in the central Russian city of Volgograd in December and earlier in the fall. With the Sochi Olympics coming up in February, a view of the map of terrorist bombings in the Russian Caucasus yields a sense […]
