Paul Goble
Paul Goble is a longtime specialist on ethnic and religious questions in Eurasia. Most recently, he was director of research and publications at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy. Earlier, he served as vice dean for the social sciences and humanities at Audentes University in Tallinn and a senior research associate at the EuroCollege of the University of Tartu in Estonia. While there, he launched the “Window on Eurasia” series. Prior to joining the faculty there in 2004, he served in various capacities in the U.S. State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and the International Broadcasting Bureau as well as at the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He writes frequently on ethnic and religious issues and has edited five volumes on ethnicity and religion in the former Soviet space. Trained at Miami University in Ohio and the University of Chicago, he has been decorated by the governments of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for his work in promoting Baltic independence and the withdrawal of Russian forces from those formerly occupied lands.
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Articles by Paul Goble
Moscow’s Action in Ingushetia About Far More Than Counterterrorism
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...
Armenia’s Break With Moscow Redefines South Caucasus Geopolitics
Executive Summary: Armenia has announced it is suspending cooperation with the Moscow-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a signal that Yerevan may soon reduce or even end other forms of...
Moscow Using Transnistria and Gagauzia to Pressure Moldova, Ukraine, and the West
Executive Summary: Moscow has long exploited its influence in Transnistria and Gagauzia to pressure Moldova not to turn away from Russia and join Western institutions such as the European Union....
New ‘Black January’ in Bashkortostan Casts Ever-Darker Shadow
Executive Summary: The Bashkirs are increasingly hearkening back to their heritage of resistance to the central government, leading other non-Russian ethnic minorities to view Moscow, rather than their local leaders,...
Three Developments in Mongolia Increasingly Worry Moscow
Executive Summary: Recent developments in Mongolia challenge Moscow’s long-standing assumption that it has sufficient leverage to keep Ulaanbaatar in line with Russian interests. Two of these developments—Russian flight there and...
Putin Pushes to Call All Russian Residents ‘Russkiye’: Word for Ethnic Nation
Executive Summary: The Russian language uses two words for “Russian.” One primarily denotes Russian ethnicity, and the other usually refers to citizens of the Russian Federation (regardless of their ethnicity)....
Water Shortages in Russian-Occupied Crimea Set to Trigger Mass Outmigration
Executive Summary: Russian-occupied Crimea is now facing water shortages so severe that as many as 500,000 of the peninsula’s 2.5 million residents may soon be forced to try to flee...
Baltics and Ukraine Move to Reduce Russian Orthodoxy to Smaller National Church
Executive Summary: The Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate is gradually losing its position at home–and more rapidly in some post-Soviet states–due to its slavish support of Putin’s war...
Repression in Bashkortostan Buys Moscow Only a Brief Respite
Executive Summary: Although Moscow and Ufa believe their repressions against protesters have been successful, the repressions will likely radicalize protest attitudes, ensuring that non-Russians will see Moscow as the problem....
Russia Looks to South Asia for Immigrant Workers as Flow from Central Asia Dries Up
Executive Summary: Moscow is looking to South Asia as a source of new immigrants to compensate for the demographic decline of the Russian population and declining numbers of migrant workers...
Moscow Alarmed by Kyiv’s Increased Interest in Ethnic Ukrainians Across Russia
Executive Summary: Moscow views Zelenskyy’s decree to devote more attention to ethnic Ukrainians inside Russia as a more serious attack on Russian statehood and identity than many in Ukraine and...
Kazakh Nationalists Call for Astana to Absorb Orenburg, Outraging Moscow
Executive Summary: Both Bashkir and Kazakh nationalists are pressing for greater control over or outright annexation of Russia’s Orenburg Oblast. Russian commentators are calling on Moscow to increase pressure on...
Kyiv Raises Stakes by Expanding Appeals to Ukrainian ‘Wedges’ Inside Russia
Executive Summary: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has ordered Kyiv to devote more attention to Ukrainian “wedges” within the Russian Federation. Zelenskyy’s pronouncement has set off alarm bells in official Moscow,...
Bashkir Protests Sending Shockwaves Across Russia and Beyond
Executive Summary: Mass protests in Bashkortostan featured calls for the independence of the Middle Volga republic and have shattered the image that Russia is united behind Putin. These events have...
Returning Veterans of War in Ukraine Greater Threat to Russia Than Afgantsy Ever Were
Executive Summary: Russian veterans returning from Ukraine have caused violent crime rates to skyrocket even more dramatically than veterans of the Afghan and Chechen wars. The Kremlin’s own policies of...
Ukrainian Successes Force Moscow to Rebase Russian Black Sea Fleet in Abkhazia
Executive Summary: Ukraine’s recent successes at sea have pushed Moscow to consider relocating its vessels to a planned naval base in the Russian-controlled Republic of Abkhazia in Georgia. Ukrainian attacks...
Beijing Grows Assertive as Chinese Private Military Companies ‘Come Out of the Shadows’
For more than a decade, China has been using its own private military companies (PMCs) to guard Chinese facilities abroad, preferring to use them rather than rely on protection from...
Despite Moscow’s Bravado, Russia Faces Mounting Problems With Oil and Gas Exports
Moscow continues to claim that it has more than fully compensated for its lost access to oil and natural gas markets in the West due to sanctions by expanding sales...
Moscow’s War Against Ukraine Results in Fateful Losses on the Home Front
Executive Summary Putin has tried to convey the “success” of his war by maintaining the façade that there are no serious problems on the home front and that the Russian...
Yerevan’s Resettlement of Armenian Refugees in Zangezur Creates New Flashpoint
Yerevan is seeking to resettle some of the more than 100,000 Armenians who fled Karabakh following the restoration of Azerbaijani control there to Armenia’s Syunik Oblast, according to Yevgeny Mikhailov,...
Moscow Faces More Problems in Achieving Its Ambitious Plans in the Arctic
Over the past five years, Moscow has made progress in gaining international recognition for its expansive claims to large portions of the Arctic. As some Russian media outlets reported in...
Ever-More Russians Write Putin Complaining About Impact of War in Ukraine
Russians have long viewed making direct appeals to their supreme leader as their last chance to achieve justice. Today, when ordinary political representation is blocked and participation in most protests...
Precedent-Setting Accord Between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan May Save Exclaves
As Armenia and Azerbaijan struggle to come up with an agreement on their borders that will address the future of each country’s exclaves (see EDM, November 28), Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan...
Moscow Uses Natural Gas to Fragment Moldova and Block Chisinau’s Turn to the West
On November 24, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement against Moldova joining the European Union’s sanctions against Russia. Press Secretary Maria Zakharova threatened that “the Moldovan decision will not...
Armenia and Azerbaijan Discussing a Swap of Exclaves
On November 28, Alen Simonyan, head of Armenia’s National Assembly, told journalists that “the ball is in Azerbaijan’s court” regarding peace negotiations between the two countries. He added, “Armenia fully...
Caspian Sea Drying Up, Forcing Coastal Countries to Respond
The Caspian Sea is in danger of drying up. On June 7, government officials in the coastal city of Aktau, Kazakhstan, released a statement declaring a natural state of emergency...
Moscow Struggles to Deliver Supplies to Populations Along Northern Sea Route
Russians living in the Far North are fed up with the lack of basic living supplies from their local governments. This discontent may soon escalate to the federal level. Moscow...
Moscow Purges Security Officials and Takes Preventative Steps in the North Caucasus
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...
Dramatic Demographic Changes Threaten Stability in Kazakhstan
The population of Kazakhstan will exceed 20 million people for the first time, and more than 70 percent of its residents will be ethnic Kazakhs sometime in November (Kazakhstan Today,...
Baku’s Plan to Reach Nakhchivan via Iran Unsettling More Than South Caucasus
Baku and Ankara have dropped plans to establish a land corridor to Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan exclave via Armenian territory. Yerevan’s reluctance to reopen the Zangezur Corridor and Western and Iranian opposition...
Pogroms in North Caucasus Highlight Fragility of Ethnic Relations in Russia
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...
China Expands Its Political Influence in Russia East of the Urals
Beijing is increasing its political influence in Siberia and the Russian Far East to better support its expanding economic activities. These efforts are directed at the political and business elites...
Russia’s Demographic Decline Will Be Deeper, Last Longer, and Hurt More Than Expected
On October 20, the Russian state statistical agency, Rosstat, issued a second report predicting that Russia’s population will continue to decline and be down more than seven million people by...
Russia’s Combat Losses in Ukraine Deduced From Rosstat’s ‘Unassigned Deaths’ Category
The Kremlin’s widely reported efforts to conceal combat losses in Ukraine have made estimating these deaths difficult but not impossible. Alternative indicators to Moscow’s official reporting are available, many of...
Kazakhstan Faces Variety of Separatist Threats, Any of Which Russia Could Use
Since Vladimir Putin launched his expanded invasion of Ukraine last year and annexed more of the country into Russia—as he began to do in 2014 with the occupation of Crimea—...
Kyiv Expands Efforts to Attract Non-Russians in Russia
As Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine drags on, Ukraine is stepping up its efforts to attract the non-Russian peoples of Russia to its side. Kyiv is working from...
Zangezur Emerges From the Shadows as a Dangerous New Hotspot
The violence in the Middle East has overshadowed the rise of a potentially explosive hot spot in the South Caucasus following Azerbaijan’s re-assertion of control over the Karabakh region. That...
Radicalization of Muslim Migrant Workers Threatens Their Homelands and Russia
Many Russians, including senior members of the Vladimir Putin regime, fear that the influx of Muslim migrant workers from Central Asia could jeopardize the core of Russian culture and the...
Baku’s Karabakh Victory Prompts Moldova to Mull Using Force in Transnistria
Azerbaijan’s recovery of control over the unrecognized statelet in Karabakh by military means unsurprisingly has been seen by some in other countries as a precedent for action against breakaway republics...
China Strengthening Its Position in Northern Russia and the Arctic Sea
Moscow has long declared that China’s role in the development of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) is a central part of their strategic cooperation (see EDM, July 23, 2020; March...
Nansen Passports May Make a Comeback for Belarusian and Russian Émigrés
Nansen passports may soon be making a comeback as a means of coping with the possibility that thousands of Belarusians and potentially tens of thousands of Russians will be left...
Tatarstan Capitalizes on China’s Expanding Role in Middle Volga
Russians have become increasingly accustomed to, if not comfortable with, the expansion of Chinese influence in the Russian Far East, along the Northern Sea Route, and in some of the...
Iran Losing Out to Turkey in Central Asia, Frustrating Tehran
Iran has traditionally faced an uphill battle in its struggle with Turkey for influence in Central Asia. But for most of the past three decades, Tehran has successfully exploited two...
Papal Visit to Mongolia Touches on China, Russia and Future of Roman Catholic Church
At the beginning of September 2023, Pope Francis embarked on a four-day trip to Mongolia. The visit marked the 43rd foreign journey he has made since beginning his pontificate (Business-gazeta.ru,...
Iran Hopes to Play Spoiler With Planned EU-India Corridor
On September 9, at the G20 summit in New Delhi, United States President Joe Biden signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with India and a number of Middle Eastern countries...
Moscow Signals It Can Still Play Talysh Card Against Baku
One of the most important trends in the post-Soviet space has been the sharp reduction in the relative size of non-titular nations in the newly independent countries. Yet, while Moscow’s...
Turkey Planning to Become Dominant Naval Player in the Caspian
Russia’s Caspian Flotilla has been dominant in the inland sea for so long that many have ignored the fact that, over the past several years, it has ceased to be...
Clash of Moldova’s Two Orthodox Churches Complicates Chisinau’s Turn to the West
The intensifying clash between Moldova’s two Eastern Orthodox churches reflects the growing conflict over Chisinau’s turn away from Moscow and pursuit of integration with the West. The larger of the...
Patrushev Says West Organizing Terrorist Plots in Karelia to Promote Separatism
Four months after Finland joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Russian Security Council and President Vladimir Putin’s closest confidant on security issues, announced that the...
Moscow Shifting Focus to Sea Lanes Rather Than Railways for North-South Corridor
When Moscow announced plans in 2000 for the creation of a north-south trade corridor, its initial goal was to bypass the Suez Canal; however, recently, this passage has been used...
In Opposition to Chisinau’s Pro-EU Course, Gagauz to Open Representation in Moscow
Transnistria has almost always attracted more attention as a tool for Moscow in limiting Moldova’s freedom of action than Gagauzia, a Turkic but Orthodox Christian autonomy in the country’s southeast...
Turkey Set to Help Kazakhstan Expand Its Caspian Fleet
Russia’s Caspian Flotilla has been dominant on the waters of the inland sea for so long that many are inclined to ignore the fact that, in recent years, it is...
Central Asian Countries Come Together to Pursue Ties with the Arab World
Since the countries of Central Asia gained independence in 1991, the Arab world has devoted most of its attention to the region promoting the revival of Islam and thereby promoting...
Ukraine’s Success on Land Raising Importance of Black Sea Fleet for Moscow
From the beginning of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s expanded invasion of Ukraine, Moscow, the West and Ukraine have viewed the conflict primarily as a land war rather than a naval...
Tehran’s Anger Over Moscow’s Position on Ormuz Islands Prompts Russia to Back Down
The growing importance of Iran for the Russian Federation and the shift in relative power between the two countries has been highlighted by a remarkable set of exchanges between Tehran...
Captive Nations Week Marked for First Time in Ukraine
When the United States Congress passed a resolution in 1959 requiring the president to issue a proclamation on Captive Nations Week every July, this measure was viewed both by its...
Growing Problems With Russia’s Waterways Restrict Moscow’s Ability to Achieve Its Goals
Russia, more than any other advanced country, has long depended on its rivers and canals to move people and cargo within the country and abroad. But a combination of climate...
Reported Coup Attempt in Turkmenistan Could Threaten Ashgabat’s Future Course
The independent Telegram channel “Turkmen News” reports that Ashgabat’s security services recently blocked an attempt at an armed insurrection in Turkmenistan’s capital and have arrested 20 Turkmen citizens. Most prominently,...
Wagner PMC Exemplifies How Putin Has Destroyed Russian State
Russian President Vladimir Putin has long promoted himself as the man who rebuilt the power of the Russian state after the chaos of the 1990s. However, the Wagner Group mutiny...
Moscow Announces End-Run Around Increasingly Hostile Kazakhstan
Since Russian President Vladimir Putin came to power, Moscow has routinely sought to redirect trade through countries in the post-Soviet space to help its allies and weaken its opponents with...
Putin Propagandists Seek to Divide Others at Home and Abroad, Not Convince Them
The Kremlin’s ongoing propaganda effort is fundamentally different than that of its Soviet predecessor, less because of the technology it has access to and more because of its different overarching...
Ethnic Russian Identity in Post-Soviet Space Not as Fixed as Moscow Thinks
Ethnic Russians in the former Soviet republics are declining in number not only because of flight and an excess of deaths over births among them but also because some in...
War in Ukraine Has Changed Circassian Movement, and Moscow Is Worried
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...
Moscow’s Plans for Russian Fleet Unlikely to Be Realized Anytime Soon
The Russian Navy has played second fiddle to the Russian army in Moscow’s ongoing war against Ukraine. Indeed, it has suffered embarrassing losses including the Moskva flagship of its Black...
Occupying More of Ukraine Will Bring More Problems for Russia, Some in Moscow Now Saying
There are many compelling arguments against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine. But perhaps the most powerful one for Russians is this: Even if the Kremlin leader should win,...
Moscow Seeks to Use Ammonia Pipeline Blast to Pressure West on Ukraine
Moscow and Kyiv have been trading barbs over who is to blame for the explosion on the Togliatti-Odesa ammonia pipeline on June 5, with the Russian side saying it was...
Moscow Alarmed by Kyiv’s Interest in Russian Far East—and With Good Reason
In recent days, the world has been focusing on Ukrainian-backed incursions into some Russian regions bordering Ukraine. Nevertheless, three developments over the past week strongly suggest that Moscow is also...
Moscow Reorganizing Russian Military for Offensive War and to Protect Putin Regime
On June 2, the Russian General Staff announced a wholesale reorganization of the Russian military, creating two new military districts centered around Moscow and St. Petersburg, an Azov naval district...
Moscow Fears Russian Fleet Could Be Incapacitated by Drones
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s expanded invasion of Ukraine has become “a war of drones,” according to many observers in Russia and the West, with both sides using these unmanned vehicles...
Kazakhstan’s Uranium Exacerbating Geopolitical Conflict in Eurasia
Kazakhstan is the largest producer and exporter of uranium globally, mining and exporting more than 40 percent of the world’s supply. Up to now, it has been the major supplier...
Greenland Set to Become Cockpit of Controversy Between East and West
Over the past several years, Moscow has been remarkably successful in convincing the Faroe Islands and Greenland, two Danish dependencies, to adopt different and less hostile policies toward Russia than...
Moscow Faces Increased Difficulties in Countering Circassian National Movement
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...
Turkmenistan Steps Up Its Effort to Become an International Transit Hub
For most of its just over 30 years of independence, Turkmenistan has been left out of discussions on Central Asia and the role of both north-south and east-west transportation routes...
Gagauz Election Outcome Creates Problems for Moldova and the West
Both candidates in the second round of the May 14 elections for the head of the Gagauz autonomy in Moldova were pro-Russian; and consequently, it was inevitable that a pro-Moscow...
International Competition Over Turkmenistan’s Transport Routes Intensifies
As Turkmenistan has been closed off from the rest of the world for most of the period since 1991 and as Ashgabat’s commitment to neutrality has meant that it is...
Gagauzia Takes Center Stage in Moscow’s Efforts to Rein In Moldova
Since Moldova became independent in 1991, Russia has repeatedly employed two major levers inside the country to try to prevent it from turning to the West, as the current Moldovan...
Baku’s Cooperation With West on Ukraine Leaves Moscow With Few Options
On May 3, speaking at an international conference in Shusha on “The Formation of the Geopolitics of Greater Eurasia: From the Past to the Present and Future,” Azerbaijani President Ilham...
Japan Quietly Playing a Growing Role in Central Asia
When the role of outside powers in Central Asia is considered, Japan is often not among them—despite the fact that it has a unique advantage which has opened the way...
Russia Faces Serious Problems in Helping China Corner Rare Earth Mineral Market
Moscow very much hopes to strengthen both itself and its alliance with Beijing by helping China corner the rare earths market in response to American plans for a blockade of...
Kazakhstan Building Up Caspian Tanker Fleet to Bypass Russia
In an aim to make itself more independent of Russia, Kazakhstan is rapidly expanding its fleet of oil tankers so it can ship more oil across the Caspian to Azerbaijan...
Rising Russian-Chinese Tensions Over NSR Could Spark Russian Military Clash With West
In March 2023, at his summit meeting in Moscow with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he was ready to create a joint Chinese-Russian working group...
Moscow Faces Serious Obstacles in Making Karelia a ‘Second Kaliningrad’
Since the demise of the Soviet Union, Moscow has viewed Kaliningrad as an important Russian outpost in the West—first under Boris Yeltsin as a bridge to Europe and then as...
Moscow Church Faces New and Greater Threat in Lithuania, Belarus and Russia Itself
The Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, with Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin behind it, now faces a far more serious threat to Russia’s position in the post-Soviet space...
Russia Faces Serious Problems in Developing North-South Trade Corridor via Caspian Sea
Moscow had counted on the expansion of its north-south trade via the Caspian Sea to help end-run Western sanctions (Casp-geo.ru, August 3, 2022); however, the sanctions regime, which led the...
North Caucasus Descending Into Violence, Further Eroding Putin’s Image as Strongman
Russian President Vladimir Putin rose to power by means of successfully carrying out a war against Chechnya. Much of his reputation to this day rests on the view of many...
Russia Risks Losing Its Dominance Over Arctic Sea Route to China and Turkey
In a development with enormous consequences both for international trade and for Moscow’s control of its far-flung regions across the country’s northern third—places not linked to the center by roads...
With Moscow’s Encouragement, Iran Moves More Deeply Into Russia Than Ever Before
Not surprisingly, given Russia’s war against Ukraine, Iran’s decision to supply Moscow with drones and other military technology has attracted some of the most attention around the world (Cursorinfo.co.il, March...
Amid Russia’s Problems, China Assumes a Larger Role in the Arctic
At the recent summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced he was ready to establish a joint Chinese-Russian working group to develop the Northern Sea Route...
Cossacks Now Challenging Moscow on Multiple Fronts
The Cossacks present broader and more serious challenges to the Kremlin than perhaps any other ethnic or regional group in the Russian Federation, challenges that increasingly affect the country as...
Russian Seeking Once Again to Use Gagauz in Blocking Moldova’s Turn to the West
Since Moldova became independent in 1991, Moscow has repeatedly employed two major levers inside the country to try to prevent it from turning to the West, as the current Moldovan...
Caspian Sea Trade Between Russia and Iran Booming
Russian President Vladimir Putin has made the opening of a north-south trade route between the Russian Federation and the Indian Ocean via Iran a priority for more than a decade....
Cossackia: A Potentially Powerful Bulwark Against Russian Imperialism
Cossackia, the land east of Ukraine and north of the North Caucasus in the Russian Federation, is the traditional home of the three largest Cossack communities: the Don, Kuban and...
While Moscow Could Not Afford It, China Will Build Railway North to Sakha
In early March 2023, at a meeting in Harbin, Chinese officials committed Beijing to building a railway north from China into the enormous and resource-rich Sakha Republic that dominates the...
Putin Truly Fears Russia’s Potential Rupture
In February 2023, when President Vladimir Putin referred to the possibility that not only the Russian Federation but also the Russian nation itself could disintegrate, commentators in both Moscow and...
Moscow’s Cutback on Icebreaker Construction Opens Door for China in the North
The growing costs of Russia’s war against Ukraine and the Western sanctions imposed at the end of February 2023 on Atomflot, the Russian company that builds icebreakers for Moscow, have...
Grozny’s Support for Ethnic Chechens in Dagestan Destabilizing North Caucasus
In September 2019, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov forced Ingushetia’s Yunus-Bek Yevkurov to hand over 10 percent of the land of the smallest federal subject in the North Caucasus to Chechnya....
Iran Joins China in Dredging Russia’s Volga River, Further Solidifying Anti-Western Axis
In moves that may prove more consequential than Tehran’s ongoing supply of drones to the Russian army, the Iran Marine Industrial Company is currently repairing a Russian ship that crashed...
Scrapping of Northern Railway Undermines Russian Economy and Putin’s Arctic Ambitions
Moscow’s ability to develop its own resource-based economy, expand the Northern Sea Route, cement ties with China and support Vladimir Putin’s ambitions to project power into the Arctic depends on...
Moscow Continues Efforts to Penetrate Circassian Diaspora
Throughout its history, no country’s government has devoted more attention to its émigrés and diaspora populations than that of Russia. Nor has any other country taken more steps to try...
Putin’s War in Ukraine Hitting Russia’s Numerically Smallest Nations Hardest
The disproportionate use of soldiers from the primarily non-ethnic Russian republics in the North Caucasus, Middle Volga and Far Eastern regions in President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine has attracted...
Crisis in Lachin Corridor Risks Triggering Broader War in South Caucasus
As the standoff in the Lachin Corridor—the primary land route into and out of the Armenian-controlled areas of Azerbaijan’s Karabakh region—enters its third month, the humanitarian situation there is rapidly...
A Slow, Soft and Incomplete Exit? Moldova’s Relationship With the CIS
When the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) was created following the collapse of the Soviet Union, many commentators suggested that either it would be a device for the civilized divorce...
Kazan Surrenders Last Vestiges of Sovereignty
After fighting a delaying game for more than a decade and assuming as recently as December 2022 that it had come up with a compromise that would conceal its essentially...
Attack on Azerbaijani Embassy in Iran Further Divides the World
After an armed gunman broke into the Azerbaijani embassy in Tehran on January 27, killing a security officer and wounding two others, Baku suspended diplomatic activity at the embassy and...
Belarusians ‘Disappearing’ More in Russian Census Than in Reality
The number of Belarusians living within the Russian Federation fell from 521,000 in 2010 to only 208,000 in 2021, according to newly released official Russian census data. This represents a...
The Kuban: A Real ‘Wedge’ Between Russia and Ukraine
Moscow is increasingly concerned about Kyiv’s increased attention not only to the non-Russian republics and regions within the current borders of the Russian Federation but also, and particularly, to parts...
Upcoming Spring Draft Set to Be Most Difficult in Russia’s Recent History
For the past decade, Russia has faced increasing difficulties in carrying out its biannual military draft (see EDM, April 10, 2018; March 31, 2022; and April 19, 2022). In 2023,...
Kremlin Worried About Ukrainian ‘Wedges’ Inside Russia
Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev’s recent tirade against the West, as well as his insistence that Western governments are the tools of major capitalist groups and that the West...
Beijing Summit Cements China’s Role as Dominant Outside Power in Turkmenistan
Since gaining independence in 1991, Turkmenistan has typically attracted only sporadic international attention both because of its constitutionally mandated policy of strict neutrality and the extreme isolation Ashgabat has pursued...
5 Million Fewer Than in 2010, Ethnic Russians Make Up Only 72 Percent of Russia’s Population
Ethnic Russians, who form the core of President Vladimir Putin’s oft-promoted “Russian world,” are rapidly declining in number, with many of those who had identified as Russian in the past...
Ukraine Is Not Behind Recent Spate of Fires and Explosions at Russian Civilian Facilities
In the months since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his expanded invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, fires and explosions have occurred at a minimum of 72 military facilities within...
Russia Now Forced to Look East of Caucasus to Reach Iran
Russian officials and international media have given prominent coverage to Moscow’s plans for a transcontinental trade corridor southward to Iran via the Caucasus. These efforts aim to end-run Western sanctions...
Turkmenistan Becoming Focus of Intense Geopolitical Competition
Since gaining independence in 1991, Turkmenistan has attracted only sporadic attention due to its extreme level of isolation from the outside world, which rivals that of North Korea. As a...
Joint Azerbaijani-Turkish Military Exercises a Warning to Both Tehran and Moscow
The joint military exercises involving Azerbaijani and Turkish forces just north of the Iranian border, which were announced on December 5, are clearly a warning to Tehran that any further...
Putin’s War Against Ukraine Fueling Collapse of Moscow Orthodoxy at Home and Abroad
After some initial caution, the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (ROC MP) has become a slavish propaganda tool for President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine....
Baku’s Defense of Azerbaijanis and Secularism in Iran May Echo Within Russia
In late November 2022, as protests spread throughout Iran, and amid rising tensions between Baku and Tehran over a range of issues, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev declared, “We will do...
Despite Moscow Meeting, Kazakhstan Pursues More Independent Course
After his re-election, Kazakhstani President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev made his first foreign visit to Moscow on November 28, an action that, up to now, most observers would have seen as a...
Guns Bleed Back Into Russia From Ukraine, Sparking Spike in Violent Crime
Guns from President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine are crossing into Russia at a rapid rate and leading to a surge in armed crimes there, according to recent data released...
Wrangel Island Controversy Resurfaces With a Vengeance
As the long-running dispute between Moscow and Tokyo over the status of the Kuril Islands (“Northern Territories dispute”) shows, Russian officials and commentators tend to react hysterically to any suggestion...
Beyond Demonstrations and Polls: The Real Face of Anti-War Attitudes in Russia
Both supporters and opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his war against Ukraine all too often rely on two primary factors to determine the amount of public opposition to...
Russian Flight From the Arctic Undercuts Moscow’s Hold on the Far North
The Kremlin’s hopes for the development of the Northern Sea Route and for protecting and projecting power into the Arctic may soon collapse. This is not due to global warming,...
Moscow Working to Block Moldova from Leaving CIS
When the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) was formed, many saw it as a forum for a civilized divorce among Russia and the other 11 former Soviet republics that constituted...
Iran Expanding Its Influence in the Muslim Regions of Russia
Due to Moscow’s growing reliance on Tehran for weapons and its desire to use Iran as a means of circumventing Western sanctions (see EDM, December 15, 2020; November 1, 3),...
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan Descending Into Chaos and Full-Scale War
What had been a long-running local conflict between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan regarding the delimitation of borders and the fate of exclaves has now expanded over the past two weeks to...
Moscow Opens the Way for Iran to Increase Its Influence in the Caucasus
Moscow’s efforts to promote the development of a north-south trade corridor through the Caucasus and to use Iran to circumvent Western sanctions have given Tehran a new and expanded opportunity...
Moscow Alarmed by Growing Non-Russian Nationalism and Ukraine’s Role in It
Moscow has long been upset by Kyiv’s efforts to reach out to non-Russian nations inside the Russian Federation and enlist them as allies in its fight against the Kremlin. But...
Diversity and Conflicts in Central Asia Limiting Chinese Expansion
Like most outside powers who have come to Central Asia, China has sought to treat the region as a single whole, a place from which it can extract natural resources...
Will the CSTO Go the Way of the Warsaw Pact
The Collective Security Treaty Organization, better known by its initials, CSTO—or by Moscow’s aspiration that it should be an equal counterpart to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)—is now on...
Circassian Protest Plays Key Role in Killing Putin’s Mobilization Program
No policy Russian President Vladimir Putin has ever announced, including his increasing of the pension age in 2018, has caused more public anger and protest than the partial mobilization he...
Zelenskyy Defines Putin’s Russia as an Evil Empire
When former US President Ronald Reagan described the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) as “an evil empire” in 1983, he did not so much transform the situation on the...
Influx of Russians Fleeing Mobilization Increasingly Alienating Central Asians
More than half of the estimated 700,000 Russians who have fled since Russian President Vladimir Putin declared partial mobilization on September 21 have mainly gone to four countries in Central...
Putin’s War in Ukraine Leading to Revival of GUAM
Twenty-five years ago this month, Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova formed the GUAM consultative forum to counter Russian efforts to keep them within Moscow’s orbit via the Commonwealth of Independent...
Are Non-Russians Putin’s Primary Domestic Target for War Effort—or Simply Collateral Damage?
For almost a century, a debate has raged about whether Joseph Stalin’s collectivization was primarily an act of genocide directed against Ukrainians or an effort designed to destroy the peasantry...
Anti-Mobilization Protests in Dagestan Becoming a Maidan in the North Caucasus
Since Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his partial mobilization program on September 21, officials across Russia have sought to carry out his order. This has sparked protests in more than...
Ukrainian War Increasing Gender Imbalance in Russia, Threatening Future
While males outnumber females slightly at birth in most communities, higher mortality rates among men as compared to women means that, in most countries, by adulthood, women outnumber men. Typically,...
Russia’s Demographic Problems Make Putin’s Mobilization Plans Explosive
Russia’s demographic problems, including the extremely high male mortality among working-age groups (Socio.bas-net.by, accessed September 21; Nakanune.ru, August 1) and the declining size of the Russian nation, especially in rural...
Islamist Radicals From Afghanistan Now Fighting for Tajikistan Against Kyrgyzstan
One of the greatest nightmares for the countries of Central Asia; outside powers, such as Russia, China and the United States, who are worried about regional stability; and even for...
Émigré Anti-Putin Opposition Risks Becoming Victim of a New Trust Operation
Not since the 1920s has there been such a large Russian emigration committed to change at home, with at least some members prepared to support or even organize violent attacks...
Moscow Losing Another Nation’s Orthodox Church—This Time Latvia’s
Since 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed and the Orthodox faithful and leaders in the former Soviet republics and formerly occupied Baltic countries began to press for independence from the...
With the Killing of Darya Dugina, Putin Finds Critical Corollaries to Stalin
The murder of Darya Dugina—the daughter of Aleksandr Dugin, who many view as the instigator for some of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s more aggressive and expansionist ideas—in Moscow on August...
Moscow’s Attacks on Western Analysts Backfire Again
In the USSR’s final years, Soviet propagandists and analysts routinely attacked the works of Western writers as being those of “bourgeois falsifiers,” arguing that their books and articles were fictitious...
Russia’s Demographic Collapse Is Accelerating
Most countries are slowly recovering from the disastrous demographic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, but Russia is not. Instead, as new data shows, the Russian Federation has resumed its long-term...
New Russian Naval Doctrine Assigns Expanded Role to Caspian Flotilla
When President Vladimir Putin signed Russia’s new naval doctrine on July 31, most commentators, both in Moscow and abroad, focused on his ambitious plans for Russia’s blue water navy and...
Is Kazakhstan Going to Follow Ukraine as Putin’s Next Target?
Many in Moscow are furious at Kazakhstan’s leadership for its ingratitude about Russia’s help in putting down a popular uprising in January 2022 (see EDM, January 20), for its increasing...
Both Baku and Yerevan Angered by Russian Forces’ Failures in Karabakh
The recent escalation of tensions in Karabakh has acquired a new and potentially destabilizing aspect, one that may matter far more in the future even if current clashes do not...
Gagauz Protest Chisinau’s Actions, Garnering Support From Moscow
Last Sunday, hundreds of Gagauz took to the streets of Komrat, the capital of their autonomous region in Moldova, to protest Chisinau’s plan to reduce the area’s autonomy regarding elections,...
Moscow Fears ‘De-Russianization’ of Kaliningrad and Steps Up to Block It
Since 1991, when the Soviet Union disintegrated and Kaliningrad became an exclave separated from the Russian Federation by Poland and Lithuania, Moscow has been worried about two aspects: transportation links...
Ukrainian Deputies Press Kyiv to Recognize Chechnya-Ichkeria and Circassian Genocide
Clearly desiring to give Moscow a taste of its own medicine, believing that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” a group of Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament) deputies is...
Iran’s Position on Caspian Seriously Impedes Moscow’s Plans to End Sanctions
In the run-up to the June 2022 Caspian Summit in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Moscow had expected that Tehran, animated by the same anti-Western attitudes as Russia, would cooperate closely in the...
Karakalpak Crisis Far from Over and Not Limited to Republic
Massive protests that began earlier this month in the Republic of Karakalpakstan in northwest Uzbekistan have now quieted down. In early July 2022, protestors took to the streets railing against...
Kazakhstan Seeks to Attract Western Companies Leaving Russia, Infuriating Moscow
The Kremlin had expected its relationship to improve with Kazakhstan following Russia’s intervention to support Kazakhstani President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s government against violent rioters early this year. Instead, since then, relations...
Moscow Turns to Regions to Replace Losses and Boost Forces in Ukraine
Faced with mounting combat losses in Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threat to expand the size of Russian forces there, the absence of a general mobilization plan undermines the...
Kremlin Faces Problems Having Russian Regions Integrate Ukraine and Belarus
Given how centralized the Soviet Union was and President Vladimir Putin’s Russia is today, the role regions within the Russian Federation have played in promoting Kremlin policies in neighboring countries...
Spitzbergen: A New Hotspot in the Cold North Between Russia and the West
Spitzbergen, the largest and only continually inhabited island of the Svalbard Archipelago, located in the Arctic Ocean, 1,000 kilometers north of Norway, is on its way to becoming a new...
Tashkent Cracks Down Hard on Massive Protests in Karakalpakstan
At the end of June, Uzbekistan’s central government published the draft of a new constitution that would strip the autonomous Republic of Karakalpakstan of the right to secede, which heretofore...
Putin’s War in Ukraine Exacerbates Russia’s Serious Demographic Problems
Wars almost invariably have serious demographic consequences, not only for the countries attacked but also for the attackers. Armed conflicts create immediate losses in lives and a decline in births...
As Ties With Moscow Deteriorate, Kazakhstan Seeks Allies and Export Routes Elsewhere
Relations between Moscow and Nur-Sultan have been deteriorating since the beginning of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 2022 re-invasion of Ukraine (see EDM, April 5, May 12). In response to unfriendly...
Moldova’s EU Candidate Status Exacerbates Transnistria Tensions
Today or tomorrow (June 23, 24), Moldova is expected to formally be awarded the status of candidate for membership in the European Union. This outcome will not only emphasize the...
Moscow Threatens to Retaliate for Lithuania’s ‘Blockade of Kaliningrad’
Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the Russian Security Council, was in Kaliningrad on June 20, where he declared that Moscow was preparing a serious response to what he called Lithuania’s...
China Building Railroads Northward, Enriching Moscow but Threatening Russia
Chinese firms are building railways into the Russian north in order to secure access to the enormous reserves of natural resources there. From one point of view, these efforts are...
Putin’s War Accelerating Ukraine’s Demographic Collapse, Experts Say
Ukraine experienced sharp demographic decline even before Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale re-invasion earlier this year. The Ukrainian population fell from 52 million in 1993 to just over...
As War Rages in Ukraine, Turkey Expanding Its Soft Power in North Caucasus
Although Turkey is no longer as dramatically active in the North Caucasus as during the 1990s, when it backed Chechen aspirations for independence, Ankara is quietly expanding its use of...
Preliminary Russian Census Results Highlight Emerging Bottlenecks
The preliminary results of the pandemic-delayed 2020 Russian census have now been released—the final and complete data will not be issued until later this year—and they are not sufficient either...
Moscow Patriarchate in Retreat Everywhere—Except Africa
The Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (ROC–MP), which President Vladimir Putin has long counted as one of “the bindings” holding his so-called Russian World (Russkiy Mir) together, is...
Moscow Raises Two Territorial Issues After Helsinki Requests to Join NATO
The Russian government has a long tradition of raising territorial disputes against any neighboring country that seeks to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) because Moscow hopes that the...
Moscow to Expand Use of Russia’s Commercial Fleet for Military Purposes
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov announced, on May 20, that Moscow is revising its naval doctrine and will be calling for a dramatic expansion in the use of the...
Chaos on Tajik-Afghan Border Could Make Russian Intervention More Likely
Dushanbe has never exercised complete control over Tajikistan’s restive Gorno-Badakhshan, a remote region dominated by the Pamir Mountains that occupies a third of the country (even though it has only...
Tensions Between Moscow and Circassians Reach Crisis Proportions
Tensions between Moscow and the Circassians, both within Russia and abroad, have reached a boiling point. The driving factors are numerous and multi-varied. In part, they stem from long-time Circassian...
An Anti-War Underground Emerges in Russia
Since Russia’s President Vladimir Putin launched his expanded invasion of Ukraine on February 24, fires at military bases and train accidents inside the Russian Federation have increased, military draft offices...
Russian Suggestions That Kazakhstan Is Russia’s Enemy Frighten and Outrage Kazakhs
A rising tide of suggestions by Russian commentators and officials that Kazakhstan is becoming Russia’s enemy has simultaneously frightened Kazakhstanis that their country may be Moscow’s next target for aggression...
Russia Seeks to Keep Water Transit Between Caspian and Azov Seas Open Year Round
At present, Moscow can move ships, including the naval vessels of the Caspian Flotilla, between the Caspian Sea and the Sea of Azov for only about eight months out of...
Debate on Whether Moscow Must Mobilize for Ukrainian War Intensifies Inside Russia
Russian combat losses in Ukraine, problems with this year’s spring draft, trouble recruiting volunteers, and difficulties in forcing soldiers to fight abroad in the absence of a declaration of war...
War in Ukraine Coming Home to Russia, Making It Harder for Moscow to Fill the Ranks
As Russian losses in Ukraine mount and resistance in the Russian army to being deployed there increases (Mediazona [1] [2], April 6), Moscow faces growing difficulties with mobilizing soldiers to...
Gagauzia Now a Bellwether of Putin’s Broader Military Intentions
Over the last 30 years, Moscow has frequently sought to use the Christian Turkic Gagauz in Moldova, along with separatist Transnistria, as leverage to prevent or reverse Chisinau’s moves toward...
Armenia May Recognize Karabakh as Legally Azerbaijani Only if Russia Retains de Facto Control
It is possible to argue that the weightiest consequence of the 44-day war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in September–November 2020 was not Baku’s victory over Armenian forces but rather the...
Karabakh Dispute Moves Into Post-Minsk Group Era
Since the beginning of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s large-scale and brutal re-invasion of Ukraine, the South Caucasus has inevitably received much less international attention. But tensions in the latter region...
Moscow May Not Be Able to Count on North Caucasians Any Longer to Fill Draft
Moscow has long counted on young males from the North Caucasus to ensure that each seasonal Russian military draft is filled. Men from that region typically view military service as...
Returning Veterans of Putin’s War in Ukraine Pose Serious Threat to Russia’s Future
When veterans of the Soviet war in Afghanistan—the so-called “Afgantsy”—and veterans of the two Russian campaigns in Chechnya returned to their homes, many had a difficult time fitting back into...
Russia Involving Transnistria in Ukrainian War, Raising Stakes for All Parties
Transnistria, the breakaway Slavic-majority region in Moldova, usually attracts attention only when Moscow seeks to use to limit Moldovan moves toward unification with Romania or membership in European institutions. At...
Moscow Using Central Asian Migrants to Fight in Ukraine
Moscow has opened a new front in its effort to find enough soldiers to fight in Ukraine (see EDM, March 16): it is ordering Central Asian immigrants in Russia who...
Moscow Outraged That Kazakhstan Becoming ‘a Second Ukraine’
Moscow-based commentators who remain convinced that Russia saved the current government in Kazakhstan by intervening there in January (see EDM, January 19, 21) are outraged that the Central Asian country...
Russia’s Military Draft—Serious Problems That Go Beyond Ukraine
Today (March 31), President Vladimir Putin announced that the Russian Armed Forces will draft 134,500 men over the next three months and release a similar number of soldiers who have...
Moscow Mulling Wholesale Border Changes in Central Eastern Europe
The most compelling reason why the international community is opposed to any border change is the capacity of changes in one border to spark consideration of changes in others, creating...
Kadyrov’s Fascism Especially Dangerous Because It Is Rooted in Religion, Zakayev Says
The fascism Ramzan Kadyrov has established in Chechnya has much in common with the fascism promoted by Vladimir Putin, says Akhmed Zakayev, head of the government in exile of the...
Some Russian Nationalists See Putin’s War Giving Them a Chance to Recover
One of the most striking features of Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and his promotion of Russian secessionist movements in Donbas in 2014 was the prominent, independent and divided...
Russian Forces Claim Control of Land Corridor to Occupied Crimea, but Face Vehement Ukrainian Resistance
Russia’s failed attempts to seize major Ukrainian cities continue to attract attention (see EDM, March 16), but Moscow has gone a long way toward achieving one of its key war...
Moscow Losing Church War in Ukraine and More Broadly
In what may be as important as any other battlefield in Ukraine, Moscow is losing the Church war in that country. The autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) has notably...
Moscow Preparing for Possible Blockade of Kaliningrad
Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow has worried about maintaining transportation links with its non-contiguous exclave of Kaliningrad. These worries intensified when the two countries cutting Kaliningrad...
Ukrainian War Unsettles Russian Regions and Non-Russian Republics
Moscow has been extremely chary about reporting combat losses in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine, electing instead to make the heads of the federal subjects responsible...
Aliyev Gains Putin’s Support on Karabakh and More—But at What Price?
On February 22, just hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized the independence of the Ukrainian separatist areas of Donetsk and Luhansk and two days before the Kremlin head launched...
Potential Wildcard in Ukrainian Conflict: Russian Army Not Ethnically Homogeneous
Except for occasional references to Chechen fighters whom Ramzan Kadyrov sent to fight in Ukraine with disastrous results, most reporting on Vladimir Putin’s expanded invasion of Ukraine has referred to...
Moscow Angry About Kyiv’s Support for Middle Volga Nations in Russia
Moscow has been sharply critical of Ukraine’s welcoming attitude toward non-Russian political refugees from Russia, its attention to the non-Russian nations within the current borders of the Russian Federation, and...
Putin’s Aggressive War in Ukraine Puts Russia at Risk of Losing Far More Than Moscow Did in 1991
The outcome of the broader war Vladimir Putin has launched in Ukraine on February 24 is far from clear; but one thing is obvious: every victory the Kremlin leader may...
Push for Circassian Repatriation Set to Spark New Tensions Between Moscow and Ankara
Under the auspices of the Caucasian Federation in Turkey (Kaffed), that country’s Circassian Association and its most important branches in Ankara and Istanbul are planning to open an office that...
Demographic Shifts Change Power Relations Within and Between Post-Soviet States
Over the last 30 years, demographic shifts in each of the post-Soviet countries have changed power relations both within and between them. The most obvious changes are in the size...
Moscow and Kabul Beef up Forces on Tajikistan’s Border as Badakhshan Deteriorates Again
In mid-February, as Russians and Afghans mark the 33rd anniversary of the final withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, both countries are beefing up their forces along the Afghan-Tajikistani border....
Russian Demographic Losses Tighten the Noose Around the Kremlin
Population growth trends are destiny only over the long term, scholars have long insisted. But five years ago, American Enterprise Institute (AEI) demographer Nicholas Eberstadt warned in the research study...
Moscow Security Experts Say Any Russian Invasion of Ukraine Will Not Be a Cake Walk
Even though Russian officialdom continues to insist Moscow has no plans to invade Ukraine, many Russian political commentators in recent weeks have been increasingly aggressive in suggesting that their country...
Moscow Patriarchate Moves Into Africa, Helping Kremlin but Roiling Orthodox World
Last November, the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) announced it was creating its own exarchate for Africa and would seek to wrest control of the continent’s bishoprics...
Moscow Needs Beijing in the Arctic but Worries About China’s Expanding Role
Russia has promoted the Northern Sea Route with the expectation that China will be a major user. And it is assertively advocating for the development of natural resources, such as...
Ukraine Crisis Elevates Importance of Gagauz in Russian Calculations
The Christian Turkic Gagauz minority in southeastern Moldova typically attracts attention only when the Kremlin seeks to use it, in combination with Transnistria, to pursue Russian interests. Those objectives are...
As Tensions Over Ukraine Rise, Baku Signals Support for Kyiv, Worrying Moscow
As tensions between Russia and Ukraine continued to rise, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev flew to Kyiv ten days ago (January 14) to meet with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. After...
Kazakhstan Protests Involve Russians, Adding to Moscow’s Worries About Stability
Moscow was alarmed by the protests in Kazakhstan earlier this month primarily because they represented an attack of the population against the regime, something President Vladimir Putin has always sought...
Kazakhstan Events Echo Across Former Soviet Space
More than any other event since the Crimean annexation in 2014, the popular protests in Kazakhstan and the subsequent Russian-led intervention to suppress them have deeply troubled the countries of...
Moscow Fears Ankara’s Greater Turan Ideas Threaten Russia Abroad and at Home
Many Russian analysts are dismissive of Turkey’s talk about the formation of a transnational cultural community called “Greater Turan.” They do not believe such a notion will really attract Azerbaijanis...
Tensions Grow Over Zangezur Corridor, as Russia Losing Dominant Position on the Caspian
Two seemingly unrelated developments are worrying officials in the South Caucasus, Russia and the West. On the one hand, tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the opening of a transit...
Moscow’s Trade With China Leaves Russians in the Far East Hungry, Cold and Angry
It is often said that most people have little difficulty living in huts until someone builds a castle nearby; then, the poverty they are experiencing becomes unbearable, and their anger...
Russia, China Dividing Responsibilities in Tajikistan: Is Conflict Possible?
Street clashes in Tajikistan’s Gorno-Badakhshan region have quieted down at least for the present, but in their wake, geopolitical competition there has, if anything, increased. Russia and China are assuming...
Violence Spreads in Kazakhstan, and Now Involving Attacks on Ethnic Russians
Clashes between Kazakhs and various non-Kazakh minorities like the Uyghurs and Dungans have become increasingly common in Kazakhstan. But now, many in Nur-Sultan and in Moscow fear that tensions over...
Tajikistan’s Pamir Region Descends Into Chaos
The extrajudicial murder of a local Pamiri activist by state security police in the mountainous and impoverished Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast of Tajikistan has sparked violent protests in that region’s capital,...
Chinese Workers in Russian Far East Attack Rosneft Offices
For the third time since the beginning of October, Chinese employees of the Russian state-owned oil giant Rosneft came out to protest. Their grievances include the failures of that company...
Moscow Worried by Ankara’s Expansive Vision of ‘Turkic World’
Since the victory of Turkey’s ally Azerbaijan in the Second Karabakh War (September 27–November 9, 2020), Russian commentators have been concerned about Ankara’s efforts to create a union of Turkic...
The Fate of China’s Rail Line to Uzbekistan Likely to Be Decided in Kyrgyzstan
As a part of its Belt and Road Initiative, Chinese plans to construct a railway from Xinjiang through Kyrgyzstan to Uzbekistan and onward to Turkmenistan has been under discussion for...
Ethnic Russians in Moscow Forming Self-Defense Units Against Non-Russian Migrants
On the eve of this year’s Day of National Unity, on November 4, ethnic Russians and migrant workers clashed in a Moscow neighborhood, leading to a media circus in which...
Victims of Soviet-Era Russification Policies Boost Their Support for Non-Russian Minorities in Russia
The recent defeat in the Estonian parliament of a resolution denouncing Moscow’s russification of non-Russian peoples reflects two diametrically opposed trends. On the one hand, the down-vote is a product...
Lithuania and Poland Want to ‘Recover’ Kaliningrad, Russian Analysts Say
Since Soviet times, Russian analysts have mused about the possibility that Germany might try to recover Kaliningrad, or East Prussia as it was known before Joseph Stalin seized it at...
Beijing Changes Its Approach to Economic Expansion in Central Asia
China has quietly but dramatically changed its economic approach to the countries of Central Asia—a shift with enormous consequences not only for the region but for Beijing’s relationship with Moscow....
Karabakh Conflict Continues Through Competing Construction Projects
Diplomats often speak of creating “facts on the ground,” that is, actions and faits accomplis of various kinds that determine future outcomes even before any negotiations occur. Sometimes these new...
Prison Revolts in Russia Growing in Number, Size and Impact
Russian penitentiaries and prison camps—and even their reputations for brutality—are important props for President Vladimir Putin’s regime. Few Russians want to risk harsh incarceration, and, thus, most may be more...
Non-Citizenship Issue in Baltic Countries Passing from the Scene
In the 1990s, the status of ethnic Russians who did not automatically become citizens in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania was a lively topic—especially in Moscow, where policymakers hoped to use...
Circassians See Russian Census as Real Chance to Unite Their Nation
The Circassians, whom the Soviet and Russian states have subdivided into twelve different nations in order to control the North Caucasus, see the upcoming Russian census as their best chance...
Zapad 2021 Suggests, in Event of War, Moscow Could Seize Baltics but Lose Kaliningrad
Military exercises not only make known what a government believes could happen but become an occasion for its analysts and those in other countries to speculate as to what the...
China’s Rapid Economic and Cultural Expansion in Georgia Troubles Some in Tbilisi
At a time when the efforts of Russia, Turkey and Iran to expand their influence in the South Caucasus have received attention internationally, the ongoing moves by China to solidify...
Clashes Intensify Between Moscow and Circassians on Key Issues
The range of issues on which Moscow and the Circassian nation are in conflict is expanding, and the Russian government, along with its agents in the Circassian republics and regions...
Crop Failures in Russia Point to Serious Shortages of Bread and Potatoes Ahead
For several years, food prices have been rising in Russia, forcing the population to purchase ever cheaper products (Profile.ru, September 20). The government has tried to rein in prices, while...
Radical Sanctions on Belarus Will Not Push Minsk Into Moscow’s Arms, Russian Experts Argue
Angered by Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s repressive moves and desirous of being on the right side of history, Western governments have imposed increasingly tough sanctions on Belarus (see EDM, May 18, June...
After Taliban Victory, Central Asian Countries Increasingly Pursuing Separate Goals
When the Taliban swept into Kabul on August 15, many assumed that this would lead to a shakeup of the geopolitical order in neighboring Central Asia, with the countries there...
Demographic Decline and Urbanization Threaten Moscow’s Control over Borderlands
Demography is not destiny except over the long term, it is often said. But for Russia, that time may be now. Accelerating population decline, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and...
Moscow Promotes Naval Cooperation Among Caspian States to Exclude Others
When the five Caspian littoral states signed a maritime delimitation pact in August 2018, they additionally agreed not to allow any outside power to have a military role in this...
Japan Increases Involvement in Central Asia
Almost two decades ago, Japan adopted the 5+1 approach to dealing with Central Asia, a model other outside players have copied. Now, Japan is increasing its involvement in the region...
Kazakhstani-Russian Ties Decay as Nationalism Grows, Russians Flee and China Advances
In Soviet times, Russian writers habitually referred to what many now call Central Asia as “Central Asia and Kazakhstan” as a way of signaling that, from Moscow’s perspective, Kazakhstan was...
Taliban Victory Sparks New Fears in the Caucasus
The Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan has sparked concern in Central Asia and Russia that this development will generate refugee flows into both regions and that among those migrants will be...
Taliban Triumph in Afghanistan Echoes in Russia’s North Caucasus
The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan threatens to destabilize the North Caucasus for three interrelated reasons. First, the Taliban victory is certain to inspire Islamist rebel groups in that region of...
Taliban Victory Unsettles Geopolitics in Central Asia
The suddenness of the Taliban’s victory amidst the final departure of United States forces from Afghanistan has intensified fears in Central Asia about the threat that movement poses to them....
Moscow Worried Orthodox in Belarus and Moldova May Gain Autocephaly
Moscow is increasingly anxious about potential new moves in Belarus and Moldova in the coming weeks toward achieving autocephalous status for the local Christian Orthodox churches. Such an outcome would...
Turkish Pipeline to Nakhchivan Shakes up Power Relations in South Caucasus
One of the most important consequences of the November 2020 and January 2021 joint Armenian-Azerbaijan-Russian declarations ending the latest round of fighting between Yerevan and Baku was a commitment to...
Moscow Worried About Growing Turkish Influence Among Gagauz
Since 1991, Moscow has viewed the 125,000-strong Christian Turkic Gagauz minority in Moldova as a useful tool to limit rapprochement between Chisinau and Bucharest as well as derail any Moldovan...
Putin’s Response to Bridge Collapse Highlights Infrastructure and Political Problems
The collapse of a single short river crossing on the Trans-Siberian Railroad 300 kilometers from Chita, in late July, and President Vladimir Putin’s immediate decision to convene a meeting of...
China Assuming New Dominance in Turkmenistan
Turkmenistan’s longstanding neutrality has kept it out of Russian regional security arrangements like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which has constrained the level...
Japan Challenges Russia in Antarctic, Sparking Concern in Moscow About West’s Plans
The Japanese government’s National Institute for Polar Research (NIPR) released four reports so far this month (July 2021) outlining Tokyo’s view that Japan should be among the countries allowed to...
New Transport Routes in Central Asia and Caucasus Trigger Intra-Regional Competition
Perhaps not surprisingly, the development of railways in Central Asia and of shipping routes and pipelines across the Caspian Sea are routinely characterized as elements of geopolitical competition among major...
Beijing Expanding Size and Role of Its ‘Private’ Military Companies in Central Asia
For the last several years, China has made use of its own private military companies (PMC) to guard Chinese industrial sites and transportation networks across Central Asia that it views...
For Russians, Space Program Measures Status of Putin’s Authoritarian Modernization
Polls taken over the last decade show that Russians view their country’s space program as second only to victory in World War II as the key “reference point” in their...
Taliban Controls Afghanistan’s Northern Borders, Unsettling Countries Near and Far
With the ongoing withdrawal of the United States’ military forces and the consequent weakening of the Afghan government, the Taliban now controls much of the territory of Afghanistan and most...
Moscow Says US Waging Biological War Against Russia
Infections and deaths from COVID-19 are again reaching critically high levels in the Russian Federation even as such indicators are mostly declining elsewhere in Western countries, and especially in the...
Moscow’s Aspirations in North Melting Along With Permafrost
The climate change–induced melting of the permafrost layer in the Russian High North is now proceeding so quickly that Moscow will have to spend at least 172 billion rubles ($2.6...
Cossack Divisions Now Threaten Kyiv the Way They Already Do Moscow
Like the Russian Federation, Ukraine has created registered Cossack communities to integrate them into the state and society. That move has put these groups at odds with independent Cossack groups,...
China and Russia Both Cooperating and Competing in Africa
Russia and China are typically lumped together as the two new challengers to the role of Western countries in Africa. They are certainly that, but they are pursuing rather differing...
Russia’s Caspian Flotilla No Longer Only Force That Matters There
Although Russia’s Caspian Flotilla remains the dominant naval force on the Caspian, it is not the only one that matters anymore. All four other littoral states—Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan—have...
Moscow Ready to Exploit Increasingly Independent-Minded Greenland against West
The Russian government is already signaling that it plans an activist approach during its three-year term as chair of the Arctic Council (see EDM, April 22, May 13, 26). It...
Minsk Flooding Lithuania With Illegal Migrants From Middle East
Angry at Lithuania for providing refuge to the Belarusian opposition and for criticizing Minsk’s recent action of forcing a plane to land in Belarus so that the authorities could arrest...
New Turkish-Built Dry Dock Will Not Solve Russia’s Deeper Shipbuilding Problems
The problems plaguing Russia’s shipbuilding sector, both military and civilian, run so deep and widespread that even Moscow’s decision to award a contract to Turkey to build a giant floating...
Competition Among Transportation Corridors in South Caucasus Heating Up
Moscow’s call to reopen the transportation corridors in the South Caucasus that have been blocked for 25 years because of the Armenian-Azerbaijani war over Nagorno-Karabakh has sparked new tensions between...
Belarus Far More European and Far Less Eurasian than Moscow or the West Think
Most Russians and many in the West remain captive to the notion that Belarus is not that different from Russia given that its people speak Russian and its authoritarian leader...
Moscow and Tehran Dramatically Expanding Economic and Security Cooperation
Among the most important developments since the end of last year’s fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan has been the dramatic expansion in consultations and cooperation between Russia and Iran. This...
Moscow Promoting Canal System Linking Turkey and Central Asia Via Russian Territory
In the 1930s, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin considered building a canal between the Black and Caspian seas because the Volga–Don Canal lacked the depth to handle large-capacity ships. But World...
West Needs to Focus on What Russia Will Be Like After Putin, New Book Says
Ever more people in both Russia and the West are recognizing that Vladimir Putin will not be in power forever. While he could remain in the Kremlin for another decade...
Belarusian Hijacking Creates Both Opportunities and Problems for Moscow
Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s decision to force down an airliner so as to be able to arrest journalist Roman Protasevich—the editor-in-chief of the influential anti-regime Telegram channel NEXTA (see EDM,...
DPR and LPR Increasingly at Odds, Complicating Moscow’s Approach to Ukraine
Most commentators in Russia, Ukraine and the West tend to treat the Moscow-backed breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic (DPR, LPR), which together control about 3.3 million people...
Karabakh Conflict Takes a Dangerous Turn
In mid-May 2021, the Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan began to take on a dangerous new dimension. In contrast to the last 25 years—when fighting between the two countries...
Greenland Likely to Be Cockpit of Arctic Conflict Between Russia and the West
On May 15, Russia will assume the rotating two-year chairmanship of the Arctic Council, a role President Vladimir Putin has already said Moscow will use to advance his country’s interests...
Moscow to Drill for Fresh Water Under Azov Sea, Not to Help Crimea But to Back Its Claims
Moscow has announced it will begin drilling for fresh water under the Sea of Azov this summer to address growing water shortages in occupied Crimea, a project President Vladimir Putin...
China Helping Russia on Northern Sea Route Now but Ready to Push Moscow Aside Later
Russia’s ever-closer economic cooperation with China may not end the way Moscow hopes. Instead of strengthening Russia as Moscow expects, it may put Beijing in a position to dominate its...
Ukrainians Fear Moscow May Use Their Co-Ethnics in Russia in Provocation to Restart War
A recent wave of arrests of ethnic Ukrainians across the Russian Federation for supposedly organizing extremist groups and planning terrorist attacks has sparked fears in Ukraine that Vladimir Putin may...
‘Canal War’ Breaking Out in Greater Caspian Region
Turkey’s plan to build a canal bypassing the Bosporus Strait and potentially upsetting the Montreux Convention (see EDM, February 9) along with Russia’s movement of warships from the Caspian to...
Moscow Pulls Back Land Forces From Ukrainian Border but Not Its Navy in Black Sea
Many observers are treating Russia’s pullback of land forces from the Ukrainian border as the end of the crisis—even some of those experts who acknowledge the Kremlin has not given...
Moscow Pushing Even More Expansive Claims on Arctic
In advance of Russia’s assumption of the two-year rotating chairmanship of the Arctic Council in May, Moscow is calling on the United Nations to approve its claims to even more...
Russia Effectively Seizes Control of Sea of Azov, Threatening Ukraine
The international community has focused on Moscow’s buildup of forces on land adjoining Ukraine, concerned that such a concentration of Russian military power will be used against its neighbor (see...
Iran and Tajikistan Announce Formation of Joint Military Committee
Major General Mohammad Baqeri, the chief of staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, and Colonel General Sherali Mirzo, the defense minister of Tajikistan, met last week (April 6 and 8)...
Moscow Moving 15 Warships From Caspian Sea to Waters off Ukraine
The Russian Ministry of Defense announced today (April 13) that Moscow is sending 15 naval vessels from its Caspian Flotilla to waters off Ukraine to take part in military exercises...
Moscow Struggles to Improve and Extend Siberian Railways to Preserve China Trade
Moscow has long wanted to develop its railway network east of the Urals, both to promote the development of that largely road-less region and to expand the export of raw...
Geopolitical Competition in Caspian Region About More Than Gas and Oil
Geopolitical competition in the Caspian Sea region over oil and natural gas fields, pipelines carrying these hydrocarbons across that body of water, and security measures intended to protect both have...
Moscow and Beijing Seek to Counter Growing Turkish Influence in Central Asia
Geopolitical competition over Central Asia is intensifying, with the two most prominent longstanding rivals, Russia and China, now confronted by the rising power of a third, Turkey. Thus, Moscow and...
Chinese Threat to Lake Balkhash Fueling Anti-Chinese Feelings in Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan’s Lake Balkhash, the 15th largest freshwater lake in the world, may follow the Aral Sea into extinction, Russian researcher Petr Bologov warned six years ago. Not only is the...
Is China About to Deploy Private Military Companies in Central Asia?
Over the past decade, Moscow has made regular use of private military and security companies to project power in areas where it wants to maintain at least limited deniability while...
Baku-Ashgabat Accord Transforms Geopolitics of Caspian Region
When the five Caspian littoral states (Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan) finally agreed, in August 2018, to the delimitation of the surface of the sea after almost two decades...
Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan Move toward Resolution of Longstanding Border Dispute
At a meeting last week, March 11, the presidents of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, Sadyr Zhaparov and Shavkat Mirziyoyev, respectively, agreed to open land and air communications between Uzbekistan and the...
Moscow Seeks to Put Gagauz in Play Against Pro-Western Moldovan President
The 125,000 ethnic Gagauz who live in southeastern Moldova seldom receive much press in their own right except for the fact that they are a rare Turkic people who are...
Moscow’s Plans for New Kind of Aircraft Carrier Unlikely to Be Realized
In late February, TASS reported that Russian designers have come up with “a new class of ship.” The vessel, nicknamed the Varan, will function as an aircraft carrier as well...
Karabakh Conflict Far From Over and Could Explode Again
Following the Moscow-brokered ceasefire and post-war declarations signed by Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan that ended the 2020 Second Karabakh War, the international community has generally concluded three things. First is...
Including Iran in Moscow-Led Economic Group Will Upend Former Soviet Space
Reports claiming that Russia will, within a few weeks, welcome Iran as a new member of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) may be premature, but they are still likely to...
Moscow Expanding Diplomatic Contacts With Less Prominent Countries in Africa
Russia’s involvement in Africa over the last decade has attracted attention particularly when it has involved Moscow’s use of private military companies to support one or another side of civil...
Moscow Expanding Ties With Iran to Counter Growing Turkish Influence Around Caspian
Moscow is alarmed by the expansion of Turkish influence in the Caspian region, most immediately by Turkey’s enthusiasm for trans-Caspian natural gas pipelines, something that could undercut Russia’s ability to...
Moscow’s Hopes to Use Water as ‘New Oil’ Outraging Siberians
Given the Vladimir Putin regime’s past reliance on oil exports, it is perhaps no surprise that Moscow has been casting about for some other raw material it can sell abroad...
Growing Azerbaijani–Central Asian Ties Likely to Trigger Conflicts With Russia and Iran
Azerbaijan’s victory in the Second Karabakh War (September 29–November 9) has had a transformative effect on the country. It not only changed the attitudes of its population, whose members now...
Moscow’s Delay of 2020 Census Opens Way for Circassian Promotion of Common Identity
For the second time, ostensibly out of concern that census takers might further spread the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russian government has postponed the 2020 all-Russian enumeration, this time until September...
Porosity of Tajik-Afghan Border Making Beijing’s Involvement in Region More Ominous
In most parts of the world, the lines on maps separating countries are true borders. That is, they are controlled by the governments on one or both sides. But in...
Revision of Montreux Convention Could Work in Moscow’s Favor
The 1936 Montreux Convention governs the passage of ships between the Mediterranean and Black seas via the Turkish Straits, dictates the size of the vessels that can remain there, as...
Joint Russian-Turkish Karabakh Monitoring Center Opens Amidst Fresh Controversy
Four days ago (February 1), the Joint Russian-Turkish Center for Monitoring the Ceasefire in Karabakh opened in Qiyameddinli (in the Agdam district of Azerbaijan), a village Baku recovered after the...
De-Cossackization—Modern-Day Echoes of a Soviet Crime
On January 24, 1919, the Bolshevik government launched a drive to exterminate the leadership of the Cossacks in Russia, viewing them as ineluctably hostile to the revolution. The original order...
Moscow Adopting East India Company Strategy to Develop Russian Far East
When analysts consider Vladimir Putin’s strategy for running the regions of the Russian Federation, they generally focus on his supra-regional “innovations.” Those have included the federal districts he created at...
New Undersea Cables Could Become a Flashpoint in the Arctic
Russian efforts to control the Northern Sea Route and to secure exclusive access to the local seabed, from which it hopes to pump oil and natural gas as well as...
Karabakh Victory Transforming Meaning of Black January for Many Azerbaijanis
Moscow’s brutal dispatch of more than 35,000 Soviet troops into Azerbaijan in January 1990— nominally to defend the Armenian minority there but in fact to block moves toward that republic’s...
Moscow’s Problems in Gearing Up for Geopolitical Competition in Antarctic
Vladimir Putin’s much-ballyhooed plans to project power in the Arctic have attracted widespread notice and sparked serious concerns in many countries, with some like the US committing themselves to building...
Grozny’s Restoration of Chechen Place Names a Serious Threat to the Kremlin
Many Russians celebrated the restoration of Russian place names and dropping their Soviet toponyms in the 1990s, seeing that process as opening the way forward from Communist rule; and more...
Vilnius at 30—Nothing Must Be Forgotten
Thirty years ago tomorrow (January 13), Soviet forces fired at unarmed Lithuanians in Vilnius, killing 15 and thereby accelerating the recovery of the full independence of the Baltic countries as...
Year 2020 in Review: Siberians Take Center Stage in Russia
The long-running demonstrations in Khabarovsk last year captured the imagination of Russians not only east of the Urals but west of it. At the same time, Moscow’s mishandling of Chinese...
Year 2020 in Review: Pandemic Exacerbated Problems Across North Caucasus and Set Stage for More Conflict
As almost everywhere else, the coronavirus pandemic overshadowed and affected everything across the North Caucasus during the last year. Due to its direct impact on the population (see EDM, April...
Baku’s Success in Using Turkish Drones Raises Question: Could Ukraine Use Them Against Russia in Crimea?
The Azerbaijani military’s use of Bayraktar TB2 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), purchased from Turkey, played such a prominent role in Baku’s victory over Armenian forces during the Second Karabakh War...
Iran Rapidly Expanding Rail Links With Central Asia and Caucasus
The United States and other Western countries have worked long and hard to marginalize Iran as punishment for its transgressions on the international stage. Nevertheless, Iran’s neighbors as well as...
Moscow Concerned About Turkish Influence on the Gagauz
Turkey’s success in the South Caucasus is echoing across the former Soviet space as well as inside the Russian Federation itself; and not surprisingly, Moscow is worried. Azerbaijan is now...
Is Crimea Now Costing Russia More Than It Is Worth?
In the euphoria that surrounded Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea six years ago, most Russians were more than willing to spend money to integrate that region into the Russian...
A ‘Railway War’ Is About to Break out in the South Caucasus
The November 10 declaration that instituted a ceasefire between Azerbaijan and Armenia also established new east-west and north-south transportation corridors across this corner of the South Caucasus, thus complicating and...
Turkmenistan, Now With Soviet-Style Deficits, on Brink of Explosion
Turkmenistan, far and away the most closed country in the former Soviet space, seldom receives much attention except as the butt of dismissive jokes or, more recently, when its leaders...
Karabakh Declaration Opens Way for Iran to Play Expanded Role in Caucasus
Like a number of other regional neighbors and global powers, Turkey has been expanding its attention to and involvement with the countries of the South Caucasus in recent months. That...
Moscow’s Determined Plans to Upend International Accords in Antarctic Facing Problems
Global warming is progressively opening up not only the Arctic but the Antarctic, and the geopolitical contests between Russia and other countries are now intensifying in the South as well...
Some in Moscow View Karabakh Settlement as Model for Donbas, Transnistria
Whenever a major development occurs in one area of the post-Soviet space, many Moscow officials and analysts often hurry to ask whether it will be repeated in another. And when...
Shusha Once Again Key to War and Peace Between Armenia and Azerbaijan
Analysts in the Caucasus, Russia and the West agree on one important aspect of the recent fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan: The city of Shusha, in Karabakh, was Baku’s primary...
Moscow Worried About Beijing’s ‘Sinicization’ of Central Asia, Caucasus
Moscow is increasingly worried about something it has not yet figured out how best to counter: Beijing’s use of soft power to promote the “sinicization” of cultures in the countries...
Karabakh War an Increasingly Serious Policy Challenge for Tehran
Though Iran professes neutrality in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, calls for an immediate ceasefire, and offers to mediate between the warring sides (see EDM, October 21), Tehran’s political elite is sharply...
Russian Domestic TV Propaganda Decreasingly Cost Effective
Vladimir Putin has relied heavily on television propaganda to build his power in Russia, and many have been so impressed by his success that they have ignored a development now...
Arctic Issues Now Dividing Moscow Elites
President Vladimir Putin’s promotion of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) and Russian development of the seabed of the Arctic Ocean and adjoining parts of the Russian Federation were intended to...
Armenia, Russia Seeking to Exploit Ethnic Minorities in Azerbaijan Against Baku
The imperfect congruence of ethnic and political borders in the South Caucasus is the primary cause of the long-running conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. But it is also a major...
Baku’s Successes on Battlefield Echoing Among Azerbaijanis of Iran
Ethnic Azerbaijanis in Iran, who dominate the northwest quadrant of that country and by some estimates make up a quarter to nearly half of the overall population, have been energized...
As Arctic Warms, Moscow Increasingly Shifts Focus There From Trade to Security
Global warming—which left the Northern Sea Route ice-free this year for longer than at any point in recorded history (Barents Observer, October 7)—is prompting Moscow to devote ever more attention...
New Pro-Russia ‘Party’ in Belarus Less Than It Appears
Moscow-based commentators have long complained about the paucity of pro-Russia political parties in the former Soviet republics, especially around the time of elections or periods of instability there or when...
Armenian-Azerbaijani Ceasefire Will Not Open the Way for Peace
Wars often begin suddenly, but they rarely end that way, even when the sides commit to immediately laying down arms. That is especially true in the case of ceasefires where...
Abkhazia Highlights Challenges Moscow Faces in Integrating Belarus
The political difficulties and expenses Moscow will face if it seeks to more fully integrate Belarus (see EDM, September 10) are patently visible in the problems—albeit on a smaller scale—the...
China Turning Russia’s Taiga Into a Desert, Enriching Moscow but Outraging Siberians
Since Vladimir Putin became president, Russia’s forests have declined in size by 45 million hectares, some 6 percent of the country’s total. The shrinking forest cover has been the result...
Russia, Iran Expand Military Cooperation Against US and Europe in Gulf
The intensification of the military conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in recent days has overshadowed what may prove to be an equally, if not more, fateful shift in the Caucasus:...
Kremlin’s Much-Ballyhooed Icebreaker Project in Real Trouble
As is often the case, much of the Western coverage of the launch of Russia’s new nuclear-powered icebreaker, the Arktika, has relied heavily on Kremlin press releases, with little to...
China Expands Its Railway Presence in Caspian Region
Since early September, media in Caspian littoral countries have been filled with stories about the expansion of Chinese rail operations there, a development that represents a double challenge to Moscow...
Upcoming Moldovan Presidential Vote May Spark Crisis Greater Than Belarusian One
As serious as the post-election political turmoil in Belarus has been, the upcoming presidential election in Moldova could pose an even greater challenge to policymakers in both Europe and the...
Moscow Divided on When or Even Whether Lukashenka Must Go
President Alyaksandr Lukashenka naturally wants to extend his rule as long as possible, while Belarusians protesting in the streets want to bring it to an end as soon as they...
Poland’s Intermarium Idea Very Different From What It Was—or What Moscow Thinks It Is
Russian analysts fail to recognize that Warsaw no longer views the Intermarium—a historical term that today refers to the lands “in between” Russia and the West and the Baltic and...
A Problem for Putin: Belarus Is Not Ukraine Either Now or If Moscow Annexes It
Belarus is not Ukraine either now or should Moscow try to annex it, Russian analysts are warning. It is far more integrated as a society than Ukraine is, with far...
Kaliningrad—A Key Factor in the Kremlin’s Calculations on Belarus
Commentators in Russia and the West have often focused on the geopolitics of the Belarusian situation, arguing that Moscow wants a friendly regime in Belarus in order to expand its...
Belarus Now Dividing Russians More Deeply and Permanently Than Ukraine Did in 2014
When Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014, his actions deeply divided Russian nationalists and many other Russians as well; but the Kremlin leader was able to overcome that discord by...
Moscow Attacks Highlight Growing Strength of Circassian National Movement
Mahatma Gandhi may never actually have said of colonized peoples that “first, the imperial authorities ignore you; then, they laugh you; then, they fight you; and then, you win”; but...
Volga-Don Canal, Last Great Stalin Project, Desperately Needs Updating or Replacement
The Volga-Don Canal, the last of the great Stalinist-era construction projects, which involved the use of German prisoners of war and Soviet GULAG prisoners to move more than 150 million...
Siberian Regionalism a Growing Threat to Moscow
The protests in Khabarovsk and other Russian cities in Siberia and the Far East over the last month (see EDM, August 3) have called attention to something that has been...
Beijing Implies Tajikistan’s Pamir Region Should Be Returned to China
A major scandal has broken out between China, on the one hand, and Tajikistan and Russia, on the other, regarding alleged Chinese claims on the Pamir region. This past month,...
Moscow Has Compelling New Reasons for Neutrality in Armenian-Azerbaijani Conflict
Many in Baku, Yerevan, Moscow and the West have expressed surprise at the Russian government’s efforts to remain neutral in the face of new fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan. But...
Second Chinese Icebreaker Heads to Northern Sea Route, Shifting Power Balance in Arctic
In mid-July, China dispatched its Snow Dragon-2 icebreaker to the Northern Sea Route (NSR). This action marks yet another step toward realizing Beijing’s longstanding plans to displace Moscow as the...
Armenian Nuclear Power Plant Able to Withstand Attack, Russian Security Expert Claims
Four days ago (July 17), Vagif Dargyakhly, the press spokesperson for the Azerbaijani defense ministry, said that if Armenia escalated its conflict with Azerbaijan further, Baku could consider targeting the...
Aging of Russian Population Makes Putin’s Defense Buildup More Difficult and Dangerous
Two recent Russian government reports that, at first glance, appear completely independent of one other, are, in fact, entirely interdependent. And their interrelationship has serious consequences both for how the...
Orthodox Fundamentalism Threatens Russian Patriarchate and Kremlin
Radical Russian Orthodox fundamentalist Shiigumen Sergey, who controls a monastery in the Urals and has attracted a wide following across Russia, has demanded that Patriarch Kirill and President Vladimir Putin...
Sochi Once Again Epicenter of Russian-Circassian Conflict—But Circassians Register a Win
For the third time in history, Sochi has become the epicenter of the conflict between Russians and Circassians. In 1864, it was the place from which tsarist forces exiled to...
Kremlin Exploiting Reports GRU Paid Taliban to Kill US Soldiers
The Russian government continues to deny news accounts that its security forces paid the Taliban to kill members of the United States Armed Forces stationed in Afghanistan; but at the...
Moscow’s Approach to Central Asia Fails to Reflect New Realities, Uzbek Scholar Says
Analysts and policymakers dealing with the post-Soviet space frequently rely on frameworks that might have been appropriate a generation ago but no longer correspond to today’s realities. Nowhere is that...
Russia’s Black Sea Ports in Trouble After Decades of Neglect
When the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, Moscow lost many of its commercial ports on the Black Sea to the then-newly independent Ukraine and Georgia. That loss forced Moscow to...
Moscow Views Construction of Canal Across Vistula Spit as Threat to Kaliningrad
The Russian authorities and some environmental groups in Poland and Germany have opposed the digging of a canal across the southern, Polish portion of the Vistula Spit since the idea...
Helping Putin Russify Non-Russians Would Be a Horrific Mistake
Author’s Note: What follows corrects an article I wrote for Jamestown on Tuesday. I was misinformed by several sources I trusted and am glad to say that my conclusions about...
Russian Military Seeking to Counter Growing Chinese Role in Central Asia
In March 2019, Dmitry Zhelobov, a specialist on China at Russia’s Urals Federal University, warned that Beijing was shifting from relying on soft power in Central Asia to using hard...
Circassians Unite to Fight Amalgamation of Adygea and Krasnodar Krai
Circassians both in their North Caucasus homeland and in the diaspora are uniting to oppose the possibility of the amalgamation of the Republic of Adygea with the surrounding Krasnodar Krai....
China Could Ultimately Displace Western Majors as Key Player in Caspian Oil Fields
Twenty-six years ago, on September 20, 1994, Azerbaijan signed an accord with a consortium of ten international oil companies to develop its fields on the Caspian Shelf, an event that...
Moscow Ready to Play Karakalpak Card Again to Gain Access to New Oil Fields
Borders remain in dispute throughout Central Asia, with Moscow paying such close attention that governments in the region now feel the need to warn the Russian authorities not to become...
Delays, Disasters and Cost Overruns Plague Putin’s Projects in Arctic
For more than a decade, Vladimir Putin has made the development of the Northern Sea Route as well as the broader Arctic littoral and seabed a focus of his national...
Drought Threatens Ukraine, Its Relations with Russia, and Regional Cooperation Plans
Water levels in Ukraine’s rivers and reservoirs are the lowest they have ever been since records began to be kept in 1885, threatening the health and well-being of Ukrainians and...
Iran Expanding Its Naval Presence in the Caspian
Western analysts tend to focus on the Iranian navy almost exclusively in terms of its ability to harass or block oil tankers coming through the Strait of Hormuz, an understandable...
Moscow Orchestrates Controversy Between Bulgaria and Ukraine to Weaken Kyiv
Last week (May 20), pro-Russian legislative deputies in Bulgaria and pro-Moscow ethnic-Bulgarian politicians in Ukraine protested a decision by the Ukrainian government to redraw administrative borders in Odesa Oblast. The...
Critical Water Shortage in Crimea May Prompt New Russian Move Against Ukraine
The Crimean Peninsula has long suffered from water shortages, but these are now often exacerbated by the ever-more frequent winters with little-to-no rain or snow. In the last several months,...
Russia Expects Growing Conflict With US Over Greenland
Almost 20 years ago, novelist John Griesemer’s dystopian book, Nobody Thinks of Greenland, captured the dominant attitude of most of his fellow Americans about the world’s largest island abutting the...
Kyiv and Moscow Square Off Over Legal Arrangements for the Black Sea
Moscow’s continuing efforts to reduce the Black Sea to the status of a de facto Russian lake (see EDM, January 23) have forced Ukraine to seek increasingly inventive means of...
Baltic Pipe Will Undermine Moscow’s Geopolitical Hopes for Nord Stream Two
Moscow has been rather explicit in that it wants to use the trans-Baltic Nord Stream Two natural gas pipeline to more aggressively dictate gas prices and transit conditions to Ukraine....
The Cambridge Five Helped Moscow Fight Ukrainian Nationalists
President Vladimir Putin has spent years trying to turn the Soviet victory in World War II into the central fact of Russian history. As a result, it is no surprise...
Russia Now Losing Out to China on Iranian Rail Route
The Russian government long assumed that Western sanctions on Iran would allow it to steal a march on the world by expanding its railroad connections to the south via the...
Tajikistan Struggles to Integrate Ismaili Pamiris Living Along Afghan Border
Eastern Tajikistan’s Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region—comprising more than half of the historical mountainous region of Badakhshan, which it shares with northern Afghanistan—is one of the most isolated, impoverished and unsettled places...
West, Russia Face Off in Belarus Over Baltic–Black Sea Waterway Project
Plans for a new Baltic–Black Sea waterway, passing through Ukraine, Belarus and Poland, have the potential to revolutionize the geopolitics of Europe’s East as well as exacerbate East-West tensions (see...
Central Asian Rail Deal Allowing China to Bypass Russia, Expand Trade with Europe
For the last two decades, Moscow has counted on Beijing’s regular use of Russian railways to export Chinese goods to Europe. In turn, China’s reliance on Russian rail was based...
Pandemic has Changed Russians, But Can It Change Russia?
The COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic has changed Russians more fundamentally than any past revolution. In particular, the government’s response and the changes in day-to-day life for the average Russian has destroyed...
Domestic and Foreign Challenges Prompt Moscow to Announce Unrealistically Ambitious Railway Plan
Russia’s enormous size and central continental location—coupled with the inherent problems associated with Russian road, water and air networks (see EDM, October 6, 2015, September 17, 2019, April 2, 2020)—have...
Moscow Using Pandemic to Shore Up Alliance With Serbia Against NATO and China
Moscow’s dispatch of medical equipment and expertise abroad during the coronavirus pandemic has been anything but disinterested. Instead, it is clearly intended to serve Russia in a variety of ways....
Moscow Sets Up New ‘Cossack’ Paramilitary Units for Possible Use Against Ukraine
Recent reports that Moscow is deploying Cossack groups along the Russian-Ukrainian border near the Kharkiv, Sumy and Chernihiy regions of Ukraine are extremely worrisome, as the Kremlin ostensibly used similar...
Possible Toxic Crisis Looms in Russian Far East Because of Industrial Disaster Inside China
The current COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic is not the only example of how a problem originating deep inside the borders of one country can quickly spread to others. Namely, an industrial...
With Ever More Flights Canceled, Many Parts of Russia Isolated
In mid-March, the Russian media was celebrating the fact that air service had been restored to a part of rural Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, a federal subject in the Russian Far...
Moscow Worried about Ankara’s Plans for Canal Bypassing Bosporus Strait
In early March 2020, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that Ankara would soon call for bids on the construction of the planned Istanbul Canal, between the Black and Marmora...
Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan Likely to Sign Border Treaty Soon to Avoid Worse Problems
Nearly 30 years after the disintegration of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), many former Soviet states are still struggling to deal with the delimitation and demarcation of their...
Moscow Now Seeking to Make the Caspian Both a North-South and an East-West Hub
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, discussions of trade routes in the Caucasus have mostly been premised on the conviction that the north-south route and the east-west route, backed...
Crimean Tatars Suffering From ‘Hybrid Deportation’ Since New Russian Occupation
Six years ago, on March 16, 2014, Moscow orchestrated a referendum to try to legitimize its occupation of Ukraine’s Crimea, an action neither the Crimean Tatars nor the international community...
Coronavirus Hitting Russia East of the Urals Hard Economically but Not Yet Medically
When the coronavirus outbreak in China’s Wuhan Province began late last year, many in Moscow and the West assumed that Siberia and the Russian Far East, which share more than...
Neo-Ottomanism Edging Out Pan-Turkism in Central Asia
In the last several years, Turkey has shifted from promoting pan-Turkism in the Turkic-speaking countries of the post-Soviet space to backing neo-Ottomanism, a move which reflects both developments inside Turkey...
Kalmyk Port and Canal Threaten to Upend Power Relations in North Caucasus
The southwestern Russian Republic of Kalmykia has long hoped to become a major player on the Caspian, which it argues could be achievable with the construction of a new port...
Russian Defense Industry Struggles to Deliver Putin’s Promised New Weapons
President Vladimir Putin likes to talk about Moscow’s plans to create new super “weapons of the future” and to show videos of how they will work (Moskovsky Komsomolets, February 23,...
Russian Railway System in Trouble, Threatening China Trade and Russian Economy
Given Russia’s lack of a developed highway system (see EDM, October 6, 2015) and its increasing difficulties with the use of rivers for transport (Ritmeurasia.org, October 22, 2019), Moscow not...
Its Caspian Sea Trade Cut by US Sanctions, Iran Turns to Railways—and Moscow Helps
The United States’ sanctions against Iran and the unwillingness of most Caspian littoral states to challenge them have sent Tehran’s maritime trade in this sea plummeting over the last two...
Plans for Waterway From Baltic to Black Sea via Ukraine, Belarus and Poland Advance
During the Middle Ages, the waterways linking the Baltic and the Black seas were a far more important trade corridor than any land routes linking Europe with what was to...
Shapsugs, Russians Square Off Over Railroad in Sochi, Energizing Circassians Everywhere
Vladimir Putin is a specialist at “hybrid” operations, in which the nominal goal of any move covers up his real methods and motives. He has launched another such effort in...
Threat of Inter-Ethnic Violence Emerges in Kazakhstan
On the night of February 7–8, in the city of Masanchi, in eastern Kazakhstan near the border with Kyrgyzstan, several hundred ethnic Kazakhs and ethnic Dungans clashed. They exchanged gunfire...
Another Step Toward the Realization of the Circassian Miracle
Just as the single blade of grass, no matter how small, inevitably breaks through a concrete walkway, no matter how thick, so, too, the Circassian nation is now overcoming a...
Russia Losing Information War to the West, Moscow Experts Say
Apocalyptic predictions have become a familiar feature of news and analysis because often only the most extreme views have a chance of breaking through the media fog. But not only...
Moscow May Soon End ‘Provisional Enforcement’ of 1990 Bering Strait Accord With US
In yet another sign of deteriorating relations between Moscow and Washington, senior Russian officials and parliamentarians have agreed that Russia should end its “provisional enforcement” of the 1990 accord signed...
Will Moscow Intervene to Prevent Explosion on Kyrgyz-Tajik Border?
Tensions along the border between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are increasing, but apparently neither country has the political will to address the issues involved in resolving their territorial disputes. In this...
Moscow ‘Privatizing’ Azov Sea by Declaring Exclusion Zones for Military Exercises, Kyiv Says
Following its forcible annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, Russia has taken a variety of steps to project its power over the adjacent Kerch Strait and the Sea of Azov, upsetting...
A Year in Review: Middle Volga Republics Becoming an Ever Bigger Headache for Moscow
Both individually and as a group, the six non-Russian republics of the Middle Volga—Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Udmurtia, Mordvinia, Mari El and Chuvashia (collectively known as the Idel-Ural)—have become a radically more...
A Year in Review: ‘Quiescent’ Western North Caucasus to Present More Problems for Moscow in 2020
The eastern half of the North Caucasus (see EDM, January 14, 2020) has been more restive in the last 12 months than the western half—indeed, one recent survey of the...
A Year in Review: Republics of Eastern North Caucasus Increasingly Go Their Own Different Ways
The five non-Russian republics in the eastern half of the North Caucasus—Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, North Ossetia and Kalmykia—have enough in common that they deserve to be treated as a region...
Tehran Expanding Efforts to Counter US, Israel and Turkey Across South Caucasus
Iran’s approach to the three countries of the South Caucasus—Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia—is derivative of its concerns to keep its geopolitical opponents, the United States, Turkey and Israel, from being...
Belarus-China Cooperation Ideological as Well as Economic
In order to maintain its independence and freedom of action, Belarus has long sought to develop relations with a variety of countries beyond the Russian Federation. In recent years, its...
Russia Shifting Cargo Traffic Away From Baltic Ports to Its Own
Since 2014, when Russia invaded Ukraine, Moscow has worked hard to reduce cargo traffic via seaports in the three Baltic States—Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia—to punish them for what the Kremlin...
China’s Trade With Europe Bypasses Russia in Both the North and the South
Russia has long counted on its geographic location between the Asia-Pacific region and Europe to cement its relationship with China. However, Beijing increasingly views Russia as merely a supplier of...
Chinese Repression of Muslims in Xinjiang Echoes Across Central Asia
Beijing’s efforts to expand its power in Central Asia by investment and cooperation with the governments in the region (see China Brief, November 19, 2019; see EDM, April 4, 2019,...
Moscow Focusing on East German Separatism to Expand Russian Influence in Berlin
For over a decade, Moscow’s propaganda machine and its networks of agents and agents of influence have targeted Germany. Russian narratives have played on German anger about the influx of...
Kremlin Fears North Caucasus Again Spinning ‘Out of Control’
Given the instability of the North Caucasus in general and Dagestan in particular, violence there seldom attracts much attention these days. But a new clash between villagers in Meusisha and...
New Generation of Russian Naval Vessels Riven With Serious Shortcomings
Last month (October 21), Russian naval yards launched the Aldar Tsydenzhapov(Vzglyad, October 21), a project 20380 corvette that is part of the new generation of ships intended to replace the...
The Trust Lives: Moscow’s Alternative Ethnic Organizations Again Mislead West
Last week, October 28, Czech President Miloš Zeman welcomed a delegation of representatives of a pro-Russian organization of Crimean Tatars. During the meeting, he reportedly declared that Crimea is part...
Dashed Expectations: Military Bases Replace Trade Fairs in Russia’s Barents Sea Region
Since President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014 and relations between the Russian Federation and the outside world deteriorated, all federal subjects of that country have turned away from Europe,...
Russian Military Lobbies Duma Allies for Increased Defense Funds
In 1961, three days before leaving office, United States President Dwight Eisenhower warned against the military-industrial complex, a term that resonates to this day. But in fact, the outgoing commander-in-chief...
Moscow Pressing for International Recognition of Expansive Arctic Claims
Last spring (April 2019), after almost 20 years of Russian lobbying, a subgroup of the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf declared that much of the...
Putin Sees Africa as a Battleground Against the West
President Vladimir Putin views Africa not as an end in itself, even when he and Russia obviously benefit directly (Rosbalt, January 19; see EDM, October 15), but rather as a...
Russian-Chinese Military ‘Alliance’ Both More and Less Than It Appears
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement earlier this month (October 3) that his country is working with China to build a common missile-defense radar system attracted enormous attention around the world,...
Will Latvia Follow the Estonian or the Ukrainian Path in Orthodox Church Affairs?
The future of Christian Orthodoxy in Latvia faces a choice between the Estonian scenario, in which there will be two Orthodox Churches recognized by Riga (one subordinate to Moscow and...
Sweep of Putin’s African Ambitions Coming into Sharp Focus
Last January, Rosbalt commentator Aleksandr Zhelenin suggested it was a mistake to try to find some “grand political design” in Russia’s deepening involvement in Africa. The explanation for what has...
Sevastopol Port in Russian-Occupied Crimea Near Bankruptcy
An old Soviet joke had it that if Saudi Arabia ever became communist, Riyadh would be importing sand within five years. The situation around the once-prosperous Ukrainian port in Sevastopol...
Moscow-Baku Rapprochement Continues—But With Tests Ahead
More than 20 years ago, Baku-based commentator Wafa Galuzade pointed out to this author that, for Russia in the South Caucasus, Georgia is the way and Armenia is the tool,...
Karabakh Conflict Looks Very Different for Those at the Front Than for Baku, Yerevan or Moscow
The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Karabakh and the adjoining regions of Azerbaijan now occupied by Armenian forces is almost invariably discussed in terms of the positions held by...
Moscow Now Says Montreux Convention Vital to Defense of Yalta-Potsdam World
Moscow has seemingly long wanted to have it both ways (see EDM, April 2, 23) on the Montreux Convention, which governs naval passage through the Turkish Straits (the Bosporus and...
The Most Important Book on Post-Soviet Chechnya—and Much Else Besides
In war, as has often been observed, “truth is the first casualty.” But it is also a fact that after any war, truth regarding that conflict is often again sacrificed...
A ‘New’ Russian Approach to Circassian Repatriation?
Several days ago (September 22), the Russian Ministry of Interior’s regional office in Kabardino-Balkaria—one of the North Caucasus republics to which Circassians in the Middle East want to return—turned to...
Moscow Exporting ‘Political Technologists’ Beyond Africa to Europe
The term “political technology” prevalent across the former Soviet space, might perhaps be best described as “a euphemism for what is by now a highly developed industry of political manipulation.”...
Russia’s Critical River Fleet Not Making the Comeback Moscow Needs
Moscow media last week (September 12) celebrated the launch a new Russian river cruise ship, the Mustay Karim (Vzglyad, September 12). But several weeks earlier, an announcement by Omsk regional...
Iran May Not Be the Entirely Reliable Ally in the Caspian Moscow Hopes For
Following last month’s (August 12) Caspian Economic Forum in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan (see EDM, September 4), a number of Russian commentators celebrated what they saw as a victory of the “Russian-Iranian...
Anti-Chinese Protests Spread Across Kazakhstan
Residents of six major cities in Kazakhstan took to the streets last week (September 3) to protest their government’s decision allowing China to open 55 factories in their country, a...
Kalmykia Seeks to Be a Player on the Caspian with New Port
The Caspian Sea littoral countries are not the only entities involved in the competition over the use of that body of water and its links to the broader world: federal...
Moscow Worried About Chinese Dominance of Northern Sea Route
For years, Moscow had expected that it could dominate the Northern Sea Route and access to the rich natural resources on the Arctic seabed by virtue of its geographic position...
Is Georgia’s Javakhetia Region on the Brink of Explosion?
In the first post-Soviet decade, many analysts in the South Caucasus, Russia and the West viewed the Armenian-majority Javakheti region as “the most dangerous potential conflict in Georgia” despite the...
Moscow’s Slow-Motion Ethnic Engineering in Occupied Crimea Accelerating
When a government engages in mass murder or forcible deportations, most observers see that as a clear sign of ethnic engineering—even if there are unresolved debates as to whether such...
Tajikistan-Kyrgyzstan Frontier Descending Into Deadly Violence
Borders in Central Asia have long been a problem. They were drawn by the Soviet government in the 1920s as part of its nation-building effort to divide the communities of...
Russia’s Defense Industry in Increasing Disarray as More Plants Set to Close
Russian President Vladimir Putin constantly talks about how his country is building up its Armed Forces and supplying them with super weapons, but Russia’s defense industry is increasingly incapable of...
Kremlin Moves in Africa Open a New Round in Russia’s Broader Cold War Against the West
Russia is back in Africa after a nearly-two-decade-long hiatus (see EDM, June 14, 2018; September 4, 2018; November 6, 2018). In some respects, contemporary Moscow is pursuing the same goals...
False Report of Leader’s Death Shows Turkmenistan Now a Serious Problem for Moscow
The case of a well-connected Moscow researcher who said last week (July 20) that Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, the president of Turkmenistan, had died—only to apologize when it became obvious that he...
Moscow Tightens Control Over Its Cossacks
In the Russian Federation, there are two groups of people who are referred to as “Cossacks.” The first consists of 3 million-5 million people who trace their ancestors to the...
‘Creeping Germanization of Kaliningrad’ Worries Moscow
The Russian authorities are quite effective at responding to specific and immediate domestic challenges. However, like governments elsewhere, they are less capable of dealing with slower-moving tectonic shifts. And consequently,...
Domestic and International Considerations Hamper Development of Russo-Chinese Rail Links
The common desire of Moscow and Beijing to develop railways linking Asia with Europe is not making as much progress as the two parties had hoped or as many had...
Moscow Patriarchate Seeking to Become ‘an Orthodox Vatican’
The Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church wants to transform its headquarters at Sergiyev Posad into “an Orthodox counterpart” to the Vatican, Jerusalem and Mecca. Such a program could...
Chinese Regions to Begin Working Directly with Russian Ones
Russians have become increasingly concerned about Chinese economic and even demographic penetration of Siberia and the Russian Far East; but in most cases, Chinese actions have been blessed by Moscow,...
Former Russian Ambassador to Minsk to Spearhead Eurasian-Wide Integration Schemes
Mikhail Babich, the former Russian ambassador to Belarus, has been put in charge of integration efforts covering the entire Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The Kremlin had to pull Babich...
Mongolia Rapidly Moving Out of Russian World, Raising Concerns in Moscow
For most of the Soviet period after 1945, Russians informally viewed Mongolia as “the 16th Soviet republic” not only because it tried to become one during World War II, but...
Russia Will Not Have a New Aircraft Carrier for at Least 15 Years—and Maybe Never
The saga of Russia’s only aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, has lurched from one embarrassing episode to another. The vessel (technically classified as a “heavy aircraft cruiser” to be able...
China Moves Toward Becoming Dominant Player on Northern Sea Route
Three developments since early June 2019 call attention to China’s unrelenting efforts to become the dominant player on the Northern Sea Route (NSR)—the increasingly ice-free Arctic waterway along Russia’s northern...
A China-Europe Rail Link Circumventing Russia Could Have Major Geopolitical Consequences
To buttress the country’s flagging economy, Moscow has counted on the Russian Federation being the primary transit route for Chinese goods being shipped to Europe. However, Beijing’s commitment to becoming...
Tajik Military Increasingly Part of Russian Army in All But Name
Tajikistan’s military, according to Moscow-based defense analyst Vladimir Mukhin, “today represents a small outpost of the Russian Army. It is completely equipped with Russian arms, has the same organizational structure,”...
New Russian Ambassador in Minsk—More Polite and Likely More Effective
During his brief tenure, the brash Russian ambassador to Minsk Mikhail Babich had repeatedly offended Belarusians and even President Alyaksandr Lukashenka. But his replacement by the more diplomatic Dmitry Mezentsev...
The Kremlin Is Actively Working to Assimilate All Ukrainians in Occupied Crimea
The international community has devoted significant attention to the actions of Russian authorities in occupied Crimea to repress, marginalize and force out Crimean Tatars, a crime against humanity that involves...
Russia’s Caspian Flotilla Gains an Air Arm
Until the Russian Federation launched a barrage of cruise missiles against Syria from ships in the Caspian Sea in October 2015 (see EDM, October 26, 2015), few people in the...
Moscow Deploys Large Network of Far Right–Linked GONGOs Against Belarus
Moscow has organized and deployed a large network of “government-organized non-governmental organizations” (GONGO) in both Russia itself and in Belarus. These entities were first elaborated prior to the 2014 Russian...
Circassians Mark Two Important Anniversaries and Look to Future with Confidence
May 21 is the most unhappy day of the year for the more than half a million Circassians still living in their ancestral homeland and the more than five million...
Kazakhstan’s Troubled Political Transition
No one, not even former Kazakhstani president Nursultan Nazarbayev, expected the transition from his 30 years in power to be easy. Indeed, despite giving up the presidency, the longtime Kazakhstani...
Russian Orthodoxy Shaping Moscow’s Nuclear Policies
Among students of Russia, it has long been a commonplace belief that the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), because of its caesaro-papist traditions, is a handmaiden of the Russian state in...
Younger Russian Speakers in Estonia May Not Be as Integrated as Many Think
In a recent study, analysts at Tallinn’s National Center of Defense and Security Awareness surveyed a representative sample of 2,800 young Russian speakers drawn from across Estonia. The analysis set...
Armenians Look to Renewed Alliance With Kurds in Turkey, Expanded Role in Georgia
Increasingly, one of the defining characteristics of Vladimir Putin’s leadership has been its propensity to push the narrative that the Kremlin has a special relationship with ethnic Russians and Russian...
Immigration Collapse Undermines Kremlin Hopes to Recover Russia’s Dominance in Former Soviet Space
The Kremlin is losing the most important “weapon” in its campaign to restore a semblance of Moscow’s former empire in the post-Soviet space. According to Russian commentator Semyon Novoprudky, that...
Putin Sacrifices Babich to Keep His Plans to Integrate Belarus on Track
Something unusual happened in Moscow yesterday (April 30), and it has dominated media coverage in Russia and Belarus over the last 24 hours. Though Russian President Vladimir Putin never wants...
Russian Navy Ever Less Capable of Supporting Putin’s War Plans
The Russian navy, the Military-Maritime Fleet (Voyenno-Morskoy Flot—VMF), always a poor relation to the Russian Land Forces given geography and national traditions, has been contracting in size since 1985. Now,...
Moscow Wants to Have It Both Ways on Montreux Convention
Moscow wants to have it both ways on the Montreux Convention, which governs naval passage through the Turkish Straits (the Bosporus and the Dardanelles), casting itself as a supporter of...
Russian Opposition to Putin’s War in Syria Grows Despite Kremlin Propaganda Effort
Many have been struck by the fact that Russians have largely not actively protested against President Vladimir Putin’s military actions in Syria, unlike against his war in Ukraine. It has...
Sudan Coup Highlights Weaknesses of Putin’s Plan to Create ‘African Empire’ for Russia
On orders from Russian President Vladimir Putin, his agent Yevgeny Prigozhin—popularly known as “the cook” because of his ownership of a catering company—has inserted “political technologists” in at least 20...
Nazarbayev’s Departure Triggering New Russian Exodus From Kazakhstan
Although there are still no official statistics as to its size, the exodus of ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers from Kazakhstan has clearly accelerated since Nursultan Nazarbayev resigned as president last...
Kadyrov Moves to Expand Chechnya’s Regional and International Influence, Even at Moscow’s Expense
As long as the Russian government was able to pay Chechnya massive subsidies, Ramzan Kadyrov was generally prepared to keep his republic quiet and play by Moscow’s rules as far...
China Will Have Military Bases in Central Asia Within Five Years, Russian Expert Says
Barring a radical destabilization of Xinjiang or fundamental shifts in Central Asian countries and their relations with major power centers abroad, Beijing will “very likely” establish a network of its...
Moscow Mulls Revising Montreux Convention in Response to NATO Presence in Black Sea
Russians are angry at the expanded presence of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ships in the Black Sea and especially in Ukrainian ports, viewing them as a challenge to Russian...
Import Substitution in Russia Failing as Moscow Buys Products Not Technologies
Vladimir Putin’s much-publicized program to promote import substitution is failing. Indeed, Russia may be in worse shape now than it was a decade ago as sanctions and declining earnings from...
Moscow Plans to Expand Canal System Between Caspian and Azov Seas
Russia surprised many last year when it used its internal canal system to shift military vessels from the Caspian Sea to the Sea of Azov in order to ramp up...
China’s Plan for Railway to Uzbekistan Is Transforming Central Asian Geopolitics
Chinese plans to construct a railway from Xinjiang through Kyrgyzstan to Uzbekistan and onward to Turkmenistan will, if realized, transform the geopolitical situation in the region. This rail corridor promises...
Cossacks in Ukraine Back Kyiv Autocephaly; Cossacks in Russia Want It for Themselves
Cossacks in Ukraine and Russia are not the unquestioning soldiers of empire and repression that Moscow, Hollywood and the Western media routinely portray them as being. Certainly, some of the...
Moscow Signals a Not-so-Subtle Tilt Toward Baku
Moscow’s recent decision to extradite a Talysh activist to Azerbaijan was a not-so-subtle sign that reinforced previous impressions the Russian government is tilting away from Armenia and toward Azerbaijan in...
Moscow Backs Kryashens to Weaken Volga Tatars Ahead of 2020 Census
In the 1920s, Joseph Stalin divided up the Circassians into four major “nations” as part of his initiative to block any efforts by that deported nationality to restore a single...
Beijing Reportedly Ready to Finance Helsinki-Tallinn Tunnel
China’s Touchstone Capital Partners is ready to invest up to 15 billion euros ($16.9 billion) in the construction of an undersea tunnel linking Finland and Estonia, according to Finnish backers...
New Wave of Kazakh Nationalism Changing Astana’s Domestic and Foreign Policies
Soviet officials always referred to their country’s five Muslim republics east of the Caspian as “Central Asia and Kazakhstan,” explicitly separating out the latter because ethnic-Russians formed a plurality of...
Russian Elite Profiteering Enables Growing Chinese Control of Baikal Region
China is rapidly expanding its presence and control in Russia’s Trans-Baikal region. This drive is, in part, being driven by Beijing’s economic interests in Siberia and the Russian Far East...
Will Moscow Open New Military Bases Beyond the Borders of the Former Soviet Union?
Currently, Moscow has 21 military bases abroad, but only a handful are beyond the borders of the former Soviet space and none is equivalent to the size and capacity of...
Can the Kremlin Finally Realize the North-South Transit Corridor?
One of Vladimir Putin’s earliest proposed mega-projects—first announced on September 12, 2000—calls for the creation of a North-South transportation corridor linking Russia with the Caspian littoral states, including Iran, as...
Cossackia: No Longer an Impossible Dream?
The idea that the Cossacks could create their own country dates back to an idea pushed by Cossack emigres after 1917. This goal was realized briefly during the Russian Civil...
Lithuania Adds China to List of Foreign Intelligence Threats
Two weeks ago (February 5, 2019), the Lithuanian intelligence community released its annual “National Threat Assessment” (Kam.lt, February 5). As in the past, this report asserts that the greatest intelligence...
Russian Warnings of Afghan Threats Bring Decreasing Dividends in Central Asia
Over the last month, Russian officials have suggested that militant groups in Afghanistan so threaten the countries of Central Asia that the latter should cooperate more closely with Russia in...
Kadyrov Pushing for Highway From Chechnya Into Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge
Three factors have come together to explain Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s renewal of older Russian plans for the reconstruction of a highway from Chechnya into Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge (Kavkazsky Uzel,...
Kazakhstan Looks to Russian Rivers as Outlets to Global Markets
Last week (February 2), the influential Russian news and commentary portal IA Rex featured a story headlined, “Kazakhstan Is Seriously Discussing Becoming a Sea Power.” To most readers, the article...
Belarusians Apparently More Resilient to Russian Propaganda Than Many Fear
Perhaps no world leader in history has used television so massively to build his power at home and project his country’s influence abroad than Russian President Vladimir Putin. And perhaps...
Telephone Bomb Threats Forcing Mass Evacuations Across Russia
In the last 24 hours alone (January 30–31), a string of anonymous phoned-in bomb threats forced the evacuations of multiple schools, hospitals and other public places in the Russian cities...
Russian Language Losing Its Position in Kyrgyzstan—and Moscow May Be as Well
Moscow has long celebrated that Russian enjoys a higher official status and greater respect in Kyrgyzstan that in any other Central Asian country. That situation is symbolized by the...
Northern Sea Route Being Redefined So Russia Can Appear to Meet Putin’s Projections
President Vladimir Putin has made Russian development and control of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) one of his top priorities. In his remarks on this topic, Putin has regularly projected...
Population Flight From Rural Belarus: The Security Implications
Nikolai Statkevich, a leader of the opposition Belarusian National Congress, warned in late December 2018 that, if Moscow sends troops into Belarus in an effort to annex it, Belarusians would...
Once-Dominant Ethnic-Russian Community in Northern Dagestan Disappearing
Ethnic Russians have never formed a major proportion of the population of Dagestan, the most Islamic of the republics within the Russian Federation. Their greatest number and highest share were...
Russian Military Increasingly Consists of Seriously Undermanned Units
Moscow has dramatically increased the number of divisions and brigades in its Armed Forces even as it has reduced the total size of its uniformed personnel. The result, independent Russian...
Moscow’s Dispatch of Bombers to Venezuela Highlights Dangers in New ‘Cold War’
Moscow’s dispatch of strategic bombers and heavy transport planes to Venezuela on December 10, and its subsequent promise to Washington to remove them only four days later (see below) highlights...
Moscow Seeks to Block Tallinn–Helsinki Tunnel as Project Gains First Foreign Funding
Dubai’s ARJ Holdings announced, on December 3, it is investing 100 million euros ($125 million) in the Tallinn–Helsinki tunnel project (Rzd-partner.ru, December 4). This amount represents only a small fraction...
Russia Lacks Sufficient Infrastructure and Cadres to Control Northern Sea Route
In recent months, Russian and Western media outlets have trumpeted what they describe as Russia’s enormous success in developing the Northern Sea Route (NSR), which will shorten the time needed...
Caspian Flotilla Highlights Growing International Role of Russia’s Coastal Navy
Many military commentators in Moscow and the West have pointed to Russia’s loss of a navy capable of blue-water actions (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, November 30), but they have not focused on...
Is Chechnya Finally Going to Control Its Own Oil Reserves—and Thus Its Destiny?
In one pivotal scene in David Lean’s 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia, Thomas. E. Lawrence asks the British general in Cairo, Sir Edmund Allenby, to provide the Arab revolt with...
Russian Caspian Flotilla’s Capacity to Project Force Threatens Littoral States and Ukraine
Moscow has been expanding the size and capabilities of its Caspian Flotilla. Most directly, this has implications for the Caspian littoral states and their development of oil and natural gas...
Russian Nationalist Group, Acting as a Private Military Company, Worries Kremlin
Private military companies (PMC), which the Kremlin has used with success in Ukraine, Syria, the Central African Republic and elsewhere, nonetheless constitute a potentially serious problem domestically for Russia. If...
Moscow Laying Groundwork for Deeper Military Involvement in Libya
Moscow is deepening its military involvement in Libya while denying to its own people and the world that it is doing so, thus repeating the pattern that the Kremlin has...
Moscow Set to Re-Activate Cuban Base It Closed in 2002 and Perhaps Open New Ones
Vladimir Putin appears to be readying to reactivate a Soviet-era signals intelligence (SIGINT) base in Cuba that he closed back in 2002. This prospect is already attracting concerned attention in...
Moscow’s Neo-Colonial Enterprise Running Into Difficulties in Central African Republic
President Vladimir Putin’s neo-colonial enterprise in the Central African Republic (CAR), one driven by a desire to weaken the West, counter Chinese expansion there, and gain access to gold and...
Moscow to Boost Protection of Russians Abroad and Make It Easier for Many to Return
Yesterday (October 31), Russian President Vladimir Putin made two important but potentially contradictory and explosive promises. First, he told the Congress of Russian Compatriots that Moscow will increase its efforts...
Minsk Resisting Moscow’s Latest Scheme to Acquire Military Base in Belarus
A serious conflict has arisen between Moscow and Minsk over a proposed joint military defense strategy document. The Russian side declares that it will treat any attack on Belarus as...
Russia’s Domestic Airline Sector on the Brink of Complete Collapse
A series of Russian policies have already led several of the country’s regional airline carriers to go out of business and threaten to shutter even more. Specifically, Moscow has ended...
Masked Russian Police Step up Harassment of Muslims in Moscow Region
For the first time this year, masked Russian police officers detained Muslim worshipers coming out of a mosque near Moscow, raising fears in the local Islamic and human rights community...
Moscow’s ‘Article Five’ Guarantee to Belarus: First Step Toward Permanent Russian Base?
Mikhail Babich, Vladimir Putin’s newly installed ambassador to Minsk (see Commentaries, July 20; EDM, August 2, September 7), went on Belarusian television, on Sunday, October 21, where he declared that...
Tajiks on Afghan Border Mobilize Against Dushanbe’s Plans for a Crackdown
Tajikistan’s isolated Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast, which adjoins Afghanistan, is rapidly descending into chaos. Dushanbe has demanded that the population turn in its weapons, leading to clashes between locals and the...
Putin May Try to Launch New Offensive in Ukraine and Absorb Belarus to Stop Autocephaly
The decision of Universal Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew I to move toward granting autocephaly to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (see EDM, September 13) is an existential threat to Russia’s President...
Moscow Putting Ever Greater Pressure on New Armenian Regime
Moscow has been putting ever more pressure on the new Armenian leader, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. Since coming to power this past spring, Pashinyan’s government has domestically taken punitive actions...
Could GUAM Lose Another Member to Become GUM?
Like the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) against which it is arrayed, the GUAM Organization for Democracy and Economic Development has for years attracted attention less for what it is...
Russia’s Demographic Decline Accelerates, Increasingly Because of Moscow’s Own Policies
The population of the Russian Federation is falling by 700 people a day, or more than a quarter of a million a year (Narzur.ru, September 23). The decline stems from...
Kremlin Cover-Up of Murdered Russian Journalists in Central Africa Expands
The Kremlin has seemingly taken another step to cover up the murders of three Russian journalists who were killed at the end of July in the Central African Republic...
Cossack–North Caucasian Cooperation Threatens Moscow’s Divide-and-Rule Strategy
Since the Russian state moved into non-Russian areas, it has generally been able to play Cossack units against the local non-Russians in order to strengthen its own position. It did...
Azerbaijan and Georgia Still Cannot Agree on Border
Of all the international borders in the Caucasus, the one between Azerbaijan and Georgia would appear to be the least problematic. The two countries have good relations as partners within...
Russia More Dependent on Raw Materials Exports Now Than in 2008
Perhaps no failure of Vladimir Putin’s casts a darker shadow on Russia’s future than the decisions he has made that increased Russian dependence on the export of raw materials. This...
Moscow Writer Claims Crimean Tatars Destabilizing Uzbekistan
A Moscow-based propagandist says Crimean Tatar activists from Ukraine are promoting radical nationalist and Islamist ideas among the Crimean Tatar diaspora in Uzbekistan and thereby threatening the stability of this...
Autocephaly for Ukraine About More Than Religion
The Universal Patriarch in Constantinople is moving to grant the Ukrainian Orthodox Church autocephaly, that is, the status of a Church with its own canonical territory and able to choose...
Russia Faces Problems With Boosting Military Presence Along Northern Sea Route
Despite the hopes and expectations of China, Europe and the United States, Russia does not view the Northern Sea Route (NSR) as primarily an economic channel linking Asian and European...
Another Russian Bridge to Nowhere—Except to Oligarchs’ Pockets
Like his Soviet predecessors, Russian President Vladimir Putin favors spending money on giant projects in order to demonstrate his and his country’s greatness to both its citizens and others. But...
Putin Now Pursuing Multiple Long-Term Goals in Central Africa
Shocking news at the end of July of the murder of three independent Russian journalists investigating the activity of a Russian private defense company in the Central African Republic (CAR)...
Putin’s Pseudo-Cossacks Assume Larger Role, but Real Cossacks Refuse to Go Along
Since the Kremlin deployed “Cossacks” to disperse an anti-government demonstration in early May (see EDM, May 17), the Russian government has pumped enormous sums of money into this pseudo-movement, giving...
New Hopes for Shorter Caspian-Black Sea Canal Spark Growing Opposition
The hopes of China and some Central Asian countries for the construction of a new canal between the Caspian and the Black Sea have sparked serious ethnic and environmental opposition...
North Caucasians Increasingly Taking Their Lead From Tatarstan
Tomorrow (August 3), a remarkable event is slated to occur: For the first time ever, regularly scheduled civil aviation flights will begin between Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan in the...
Armenia’s Involvement With NATO Helps It Strengthen Relations With Georgia
Russian and Western analysts often view the pursuit of contacts with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) by countries between Russia and the Alliance as a zero-sum game—particularly, as far...
Moscow Unevenly Doles Out the Draft in the North Caucasus
Every six months, the Russian government conscripts a new cohort of soldiers for its armed services. For the last five years, since the military draft was renewed across the North...
Kazakhs Increasingly Hostile to Both Russians and Chinese
Kazakhstanis are increasingly skeptical of close ties with both Russians and Chinese, profoundly limiting the ability of the former to recover the influence Moscow once had there and making it...
Putin Names FSB Officer to be New Ambassador to Belarus
Since 1991, Moscow has generally been careful to send Russian ambassadors with impeccable diplomatic credentials to the post-Soviet states. Nevertheless, many non-Russians have still suspected some of these diplomats of...
To Boost Statistics, Russia Producing Rocket Engines No One Wants
The Soviet economy was notorious for producing goods no one wanted to buy so that managers could put out the kind of statistics the Communist Party bosses wanted. Something similar...
New Russian Naval Base in Dagestan Assumes More Menacing Dimension
Moscow is relocating the home base of its Caspian Flotilla from Astrakhan to a new port facility in Kaspiysk, Dagestan (see EDM, June 4), an action scheduled to be completed...
China Pursuing Dominance of Northern Sea Route
In January 2018, Beijing issued a White Paper on its strategic approach to the Northern Sea Route (NSR). The document notes China wants to take advantage of this shortcut to...
Iranian Influence in Nakhchivan: Impact on Azerbaijani-Armenian Conflict
Iran has traditionally had enormous influence in Nakhchivan, the large western exclave of Azerbaijan. Partially, this is an outcome of history—Nakhchivan’s population was more Persianized than other portions of Azerbaijan....
Russia Expands Its Fleet in Sea of Azov to Some 40 Ships, Kyiv Warns
The Russian navy has boosted its presence in the Sea of Azov to approximately 40 ships, giving it the ability to control that body of water and to strike virtually...
Chinese Behavior in Siberia Sparks Local Anger Against Beijing—and Moscow
Russians have long feared that the demographic imbalance between an overpopulated China and an underpopulated Siberia and Russian Far East will eventually result in Beijing’s taking control of what is...
Putin’s Ten-Year War on the Real Cossacks
Few in Russia or the West paid much attention to the Cossacks until a group of people claiming to be members attacked anti-Kremlin demonstrators, in Moscow, on May 5 (see...
Putin Reentering Korea Conflict in Big Way
Some, especially in the West, have argued that United States President Donald Trump has effectively sidelined Russia from the rapidly evolving Korean situation by his rapprochement with North Korea’s dictator,...
Moscow Quickly Expanding Ties to Africa
Moscow is returning to sub-Saharan Africa in a big way by exploiting ties and themes developed in Soviet times: it is talking about anti-colonialism, providing university training for Africans in...
Nakhchivan Again Site of Broader and More Dangerous Geopolitical Competition
Ankara’s announcement last week (June 6) that it will begin building a railroad up to the Turkish border with Nakhchivan later this year, combined with news of Baku’s redeployment of...
Russia’s Caspian Flotilla, Dominant at Sea, Gains New Shore-Landing Capability
As the five Caspian littoral states—Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Iran—move toward an agreement on the re-division of the Caspian Sea (see EDM, November 7, 2017), an action made necessary...
Moscow Hopes Gagauz Nation Can Help Save Russian Language in Moldova
Now that the Moldovan Constitutional Court has annulled the special status the Russian language has enjoyed in that republic since independence, Moscow is hoping to use the Gagauz nation within...
Moscow Shifts Flotilla From Caspian to Azov Sea, Giving It a New Offensive Capability
In the last two weeks of May, Moscow has quietly shifted five naval vessels from the Caspian Flotilla to the Sea of Azov, a move the Russian authorities have cast...
Circassians Remember the Past But Mobilize for the Future
This year as every year for more than a century, the nearly 500,000 Circassians in their North Caucasus homeland and the more than five million Circassians in the diaspora paused,...
Moscow Set to Establish Second Military Base in Kyrgyzstan
After almost five years of fits and starts on the question, Moscow is set to open a second military base in Kyrgyzstan. With this strengthened military presence, Russia will be...
Baltic Governments Respond to Growing Russian Spy Threat
The governments of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania face an increasingly large espionage threat from the Russian Federation. Naturally, this threat includes the introduction or recruitment of Russian agents to engage...
Kremlin’s Increasing Reliance on Cossacks Reflects Weaknesses of Russian State
Few recent events have alarmed Russian society as much as the on May 5 Cossack whip (nagaika) attacks in Moscow on street demonstrators who had been organized by opposition leader...
Belarusian Military Rapidly Degrading
Almost no one in Minsk—or indeed anywhere else—expects that the Belarusian military could repel an invasion by Russian forces. The balance of power between the two countries is simply too...
Armenian Events Spark Public Activism and Repression in North Caucasus
The so-called “Velvet Revolution” in Armenia (see EDM, April 23, May 3) is highly unlikely to shift the country’s orientation away from Moscow in the near term, particularly given the...
Kerch Strait Now a Flashpoint for Russian and Ukrainian Forces
The next major battle between Russian aggressors and Ukrainian defenders may take place not in Donbas but on the waters of the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait, a...
Chechnya’s Kadyrov Wants to Revive Tsarist-Era ‘Savage Division’
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov wants Moscow to allow regional leaders to organize non-Russian military formations on the model of one of the most legendary units of the Tsarist army in...
Ukraine Threatens to Block Russian Shipping on the Danube
In response to Moscow’s threat to bottle up Ukrainian shipping within the shared Azov Sea, the Ukrainian government is currently considering a plan to block Russia’s use of the Danube...
US-Kazakh Accord to Use Caspian Ports as Afghan Support Hubs Irks Moscow
Since 1991, two key questions have dominated discussions of the fate of the Caspian Sea: First, how will it be divided now that there are five littoral states rather than...
Armenian Events May Frighten Putin Even More Than Ukrainian Ones
The popular mass protests that forced former Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan to resign as the newly installed prime minister of that country—a tactic he copied from Vladimir Putin (albeit with...
Moscow Using Serbs Against Bosnia as It Did Ethnic Russians Against Ukraine
Many Western analysts have focused on the ways Moscow is seeking to use ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers in the former Soviet republics to expand the Kremlin’s influence—both by actually destabilizing...
Moscow Tilts Toward POLISARIO, Against Morocco and Europe
Russia is continuing to shift away from its earlier support of the government of Morocco toward the Polisario Front (Frente Popular de Liberación de Saguía el Hamra y Río de...
Russian Navy Preparing to Bottle up Ukrainian Shipping in Sea of Azov
From Moscow’s point of view, its loss of control over much of the Black Sea littoral and ports as a result of the disintegration of the Soviet Union is a...
2018 Spring Draft Highlights Russia’s Demographic Decline
When a country is faced with demographic decline—an excess of deaths over births and a reduction in the number of individuals annually entering adulthood—one of the first areas its government...
Vasilyev’s Much-Ballyhooed Cadres Revolution in Dagestan Has Not Happened
When, in October 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed Vladimir Vasilyev to take over from Ramazan Abdulatipov as head of the North Caucasus republic of Dagestan, there were widespread hopes...
Moscow Plans New Arctic Port to Bypass Baltics and Ukraine
Because oil and natural gas are Russia’s largest exports (Gks.ru, accessed April 3), it is entirely understandable that Moscow’s efforts to build pipelines to the West bypassing the three Baltic...
China Expanding in Russia’s Transbaikal—and Russian Taxpayers Are Paying for It
A new scandal is adding fuel to the fire of Russian fears about Chinese penetration of Siberia and the Russian Far East. The Russian media in those regions is reporting...
Russian Siloviki Fight for Control of Still-Illegal ‘Private’ Military Companies
One of the clearest indications of the potential importance of any new innovation is the level to which various power centers fight to control it. As such, it is quite...
Muslim Migrants Become More Religious After Arriving in Moscow
The Muslim population of the Russian capital has grown dramatically in recent years, with the arrival in the 1990s of North Caucasians fleeing from violence in their home areas and...
Central Asia Ready to Move on Without Russia
Since becoming independent in 1991, the countries of Central Asia, both individually and collectively, have been viewed by many outsiders and even some of their own people as the inevitable...
Russian Military Expert: Moscow Must Focus on Defending Itself Against Hybrid Wars
The Vladimir Putin regime, which is generally given credit for coming up with the concept of “hybrid war” (“New Type Warfare”) and deploying it against other countries, is now struggling...
Putin’s Man in Dagestan Faces Increasing Resistance and Opposition at Home
Vladimir Vasilyev, the ethnic Russian Vladimir Putin installed as head of Dagestan, has attracted widespread attention and approval from Moscow for using officials who—like himself—come from outside the republic, to...
Only If All Russians Become Immortal Could Putin’s Demographic Projections Be Realized
Russia has little hope of boosting its population through increasing the number of births—the size of the child-bearing cohort is rapidly declining, and preferences for smaller families are growing. In...
Tajikistan’s Islamist Extremists Concentrated in Big Cities at Home and in Russia
Despite popular misperceptions of religiosity in general and Islam in particular flourishing most strongly in poor rural areas, the Islamist revival of the last 30 years has been primarily an...
With New Alphabet, Kazakhstan Moves Decisively Away From Russian World
After much debate, Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev has approved a new Latin-based alphabet for the titular language of his country. The new alphabet will not include apostrophes as did the...
Russian Emigration Goes ‘Wholesale’: Workers in Omsk Oblast Fleeing Economic Collapse
Many in Moscow and the West have long kept track of what might be called “retail” emigration from Russia: the flight of people who have landed in trouble with the...
Will the ‘Uzbek Gorbachev’ Succeed-or Be Allowed To?
Since becoming president of Uzbekistan in September 2016, following the death of longtime authoritarian leader Islam Karimov, Shavkat Mirziyoyev has taken steps to dramatically improve relations with his country’s neighbors...
Is Unidentified White Powder in Envelopes the Successor to Telephone Terrorism in Russia?
Since last September, more than three million Russians have been evacuated from thousands of schools, businesses, cultural facilities and government offices in cities and towns across Russia in response to...
Moscow Wants to Homogenize Cossacks, Destroying Their Distinctive Traditions
The Kremlin is now working to integrate the estimated five million Cossacks of the Russian Federation into Putin’s power vertical, reducing them to a transmission belt for the powers that...
Kremlin Covertly Promoting Regime Change in Latvia, Riga Security Official Warns
Thanks to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as well as its own efforts, Latvia almost certainly is protected against a Russian military threat of the kind some in Moscow...
Stalin Did Not Succeed in Building Northern Railway and Neither Will Putin
Throughout its history, Russia has faced a fundamental geographic problem: the rivers on which the country relies, both during shipping seasons and in winter-time as “ice roads,” flow almost exclusively...
What Is China’s Military Doing on the Afghan-Tajik Border?
Perhaps few places on earth are as wrapped in mystery and intrigue as the northern reaches of Afghanistan, where, 150 years ago, Russia and the United Kingdom played the great...
Tajikistan, Most Muslim Country in Central Asia, Struggles to Rein In Islam
In the last month alone, local authorities closed almost 100 mosques in the northern part of Tajikistan, the latest effort by Dushanbe to control Islam in the most fervently Muslim...
Defense Spending Keeps Russian Space Program on Life Support
Roscosmos, the Russian government corporation responsible for Moscow’s space program, is consuming ever larger amounts of budgetary funds but is failing to provide anything in return. That situation has led...
China’s ‘Soft Power’ in Central Asia Both More and Less than It Appears
From one perspective, China has enormous “soft power” in Central Asia, the ability, as Joseph Nye defined it (Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power, New York, 1990),...
Moscow Works to Block North Caucasus Nations From Making Common Cause
Moscow’s ability to run the country depends on keeping the non-Russians apart and at odds with each other. This gives the center the ability to play one group off against...
‘Russians Are Not Fools’—Moscow Failing to Encourage Significant Migration to Far East
Since the 19th century, Russian rulers have sought to encourage Russians to move to the Far Eastern borderlands of the country in order to defend it against possible encroachments by...
Moscow Now Wants Missiles Rather Than a Base in Belarus, Minsk Analyst Says
Technological breakthroughs in Russian military aviation and the expansion of a Russian airbase in Kaliningrad mean that the opening of a Russian military airfield in Belarus would do less for...
Any Russian Naval Expansion Is Many Years Away
Vladimir Putin talks boldly about expanding the Russian military and especially the Russian fleet, but any expansion of the latter is, at best, many years away. Not only does it...
Like Its Neighbors, Belarus Seeks to Block Russian Propaganda
In a series of moves that may come as a surprise to those accustomed to viewing Belarus as the closest and inalienable ally of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Alyaksandr Lukashenka has...
A Year in Review: More Problems, More Reforms, More Cooperation for Central Asia in 2017
Central Asia in 2017 recalls Charles Dickens’ observation in A Tale of Two Cities: it was truly the best of times, if far from perfect, and the worst of times,...
A Year in Review: For North Caucasus in 2017, Old Problems Remain While New Ones Arise
At the end of December and following Vladimir Putin’s premature declaration of victory in Syria (see EDM, December 14, 2017), Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) announced that the militant underground...
Moscow, Tehran to Fight ‘Turkification of Azerbaijan’
Russia is once again focusing on Azerbaijan’s attachment to Turkey and on its “Turkification” of the minority nationalities within its borders, something one advisor to the Kremlin says is a...
Moscow Patriarchate Promotes the Kremlin’s Interests and Its Own in the Middle East
The Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate is intensifying its efforts to promote the Kremlin’s interests and its own in the Middle East. Although the Church, either directly or...
Kremlin to Do Away With Non-Russian Republics, Presidential Representative Says
Ever since President Vladimir Putin began his regional amalgamation campaign in 2003, and especially since he launched his attack on non-Russian languages last summer (see EDM, September 19), many non-Russians...
Russian Overreach Calls Into Question Baku’s Balanced Foreign Policy
Like his father Heydar Aliyev before him, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev remains committed to a balanced foreign policy, one that seeks to maintain good relations with both the Russian Federation...
Kyrgyz-Tajik Territorial Disputes Threaten Regional Stability
After gaining their independence a quarter century ago, all of the countries of the post-Soviet space have had to delimit their borders with each other. Most have had conflicts, but...
Moscow Again Training More Belarusian Youths in Ultra-Right Camps in Russia
The Russian government is committed to ensuring that Belarus remains dependent on Moscow and serves as a buffer state between the Russian Federation and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)...
Dagestan Rocked by Unprecedented Wave of Demonstrations
One of the most dangerous times for almost any society is when new leaders decide to launch reforms. On the one hand, elites and even portions of the society that...
Notion of a ‘Civic Russian Nation’ Likely to Prove as Ephemeral as the ‘Soviet People’
Over the course of the past year, the Kremlin has been pushing the notion of the existence of a “civic Russian nation” (rossiiskaya natsiiya). This idea is meant to unify...
Fewer than 100,000 Ethnic Russians Remain in Dagestan, a Major Problem for Moscow and Makhachkala
The continuing, radical and apparently irreversible decline in the size of the ethnic-Russian community in Dagestan, the poorest and most heavily Muslim republic in the North Caucasus, is creating serious...
Regionalism in Russia: Western Broadcasts and Moscow’s Concerns
Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev said, last October, that there are “many Catalonias” within the borders of the Russian Federation, areas defined by intensifying regional identities in opposition to Moscow...
Tehran Summit Appears to Open the Way to Delimitation of Caspian Sea
The November 1 tripartite summit in Tehran among the presidents of Russia, Iran and Azerbaijan appears to have opened the way to resolving one of the most neuralgic problems of...
As Russian Support for Ukrainian War Ebbs, Kremlin Mulling New ‘Hybrid’ Tactics
Vladimir Putin’s Anschluss of Crimea gave him a big political boost, and Russians still overwhelmingly support the annexation of that Ukrainian peninsula. But support for Russian forces and their clients...
Putin’s Military Buildup Not Sparking Predicted Economic Growth in Russia
Numerous governments have historically sought to use military spending as a means to solve domestic economic problems and generate growth. Indeed, this pattern has been so widespread that, in Russia,...
Moscow Losing Its Leverage in Kazakhstan as Astana Loses Influence Over Nationalists
Russia is rapidly losing its traditional leverage in Kazakhstan. Not only is demographic change swiftly reducing the share of ethnic Russians in the population, but the government in Astana is...
Russian Far East Ill-Prepared for War in Korea, Expert Says
Instead of preparing for a military conflict on the Korean peninsula, Russian officials and the media dependent on them are urging residents of the Russian Far East to focus on...
Hyper-Centralization of Russia Threatens Its Development and Survival
Vladimir Putin’s centralization of power in Moscow over the last 18 years reflects his belief, and that of many others’, that the disintegration of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics...
Kazakhstan Faces Three Kinds of Separatist Threats
More than any other non-Russian country in the post-Soviet space, Kazakhstan now faces separatist challenges that were structured into it by Joseph Stalin in the 1920s and 1930s, when he...
Moscow Bribes Bishkek to Stop Kyrgyzstan From Changing to Latin Alphabet
Kyrgyzstan is not the poorest post-Soviet state, but it is the recipient of more Russian money than any other (Turantoday.com, October 11). And Moscow’s payments appear to have purchased at...
Orthodox Fundamentalists Backed by Russian Siloviki, Scholar Says
Many have wondered why the Russian government has not come down harder on what some are calling “the Orthodox Jihad,” radical groups within the Russian Orthodox Church that, despite opposition...
Despite Cut in Draft Numbers, Russia Unlikely to Have Fully Professional Army Soon
Russian officials are insisting, and many commentators are accepting without question, that the reduction in the fall draft quota this year shows Moscow is on course to meet President Vladimir...
China Preparing to Bypass Russia’s Northern Sea Route in Arctic
The Arctic icepack is retreating faster than anyone expected. But at the same time, Russia has failed to set up reliable guidance and communications networks along the Northern Sea Route...
Russian Portion of Caspian May Dry up This Century, Threatening Moscow’s Interests
Many countries around the world are now threatened by rising sea levels in coastal areas as a result of climate change and the melting of the polar ice caps. Russia...
Language Fight in Tatarstan Set to Ignite Political Explosion Across Russia
Political leaders normally like to convert “either/or” issues into “more or less” ones because the latter permit compromises while the former typically do not. However, the fight over the requirement...
Uzbekistan a Year After Karimov
For most of the last two decades, specialists on Central Asia have asked what will happen when one or another of its longtime authoritarian leaders passes from the scene. Many...
Zapad 2017 Plan Reflects Religious and Ethnic Factors, Not Just Geopolitical Ones
The upcoming Zapad 2017 joint exercise by Russian and Belarusian troops in Belarus has sparked concerns that it may be used by Moscow either to carry out a hybrid revolution...
Why Does Kyrgyzstan Want a Second Russian Military Base?
Kyrgyzstan has had a Russian military base on its territory since handing over the Kant airfield to Moscow in 2003. And now it wants a second one. The Kyrgyz Republic’s president,...
Kaliningrad Separatism Again on the Rise
Kaliningrad oblast, the non-contiguous part of the Russian Federation that Joseph Stalin formed after annexing much of German East Prussia at the end of World War II, has often been...
‘Railroad Wars’ Intensify in South Caucasus
The competition between two rail corridor projects in the South Caucasus—the north-south one, long promoted by Moscow, and the east-west one backed by China, Central Asia and the West—has been...
Inter-Ethnic Land Conflicts Threaten Borders in North Caucasus
Since the end of the Soviet system, the greatest source of conflicts in the North Caucasus has been neither Islamism nor nationalism but rather property—over who controls this or that...
Moscow Cannot Afford a South Ossetian Strategy in Ukraine’s Donbas
Vladimir Putin has slammed the brakes on a much-ballyhooed Duma proposal to offer Ukrainians in the occupied Donbas region Russian citizenship on a simplified basis (Kommersant, July 18). Almost certainly,...
Ethnic Conflicts in Dagestan Multiply, Threatening Far More Than Only That Republic
Ethnic conflicts in Dagestan, the most Islamic and multi-ethnic republic in the North Caucasus, have multiplied and intensified over the last month. The turmoil threatens not only the territorial integrity...
Why Is Moscow so Afraid of 2,000 Pomors in Karelia?
In 1953, subscribers to the third edition of the Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopedia were told to cut out the pages in one of its volumes devoted to a biography of the...
Jamestown Analyst Paul Goble Interviewed by New Yorker Magazine
On June 19, The New Yorker magazine published a piece on alleged murders of Putin critics in the United States, which featured comments by regular EDM contributor Paul Goble.
Moscow, Circassians Now on Collision Course
The Circassian national movement in the North Caucasus as well as in the diaspora is on the rise. In part, this trend is powered by new activism among Circassian young...
Having Lost ‘Soft’ Power in Post-Soviet Space, Moscow Increasingly Using ‘Hard’
The aggressiveness Moscow has shown in its relations with countries in the former Soviet space reflects Russia’s loss of influence via “soft” power channels. At the same time, the Kremlin’s...
Turkic Nogays Say Makhachkala’s Land Reform Threatens Ethnic Peace in Dagestan
The leaders of Dagestan’s 40,000 Nogays, say that Makhachkala’s latest land reform program violates Moscow’s nationality policy, threatens their survival as a nation, and undermines the possibility for inter-ethnic peace...
Moscow’s War in Ukraine Deepens Divides Among Russia’s Cossacks
With the encouragement of the Moscow media, many in Russia and the West assume that Russian Cossacks are entirely behind Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, that they are the group...
Collapse of Russian Shipping in the Caspian Puts Moscow’s Regional Strategy at Risk
Since the start of 2017, the amount of cargo passing through Russian ports on the Caspian Sea has fallen, compared to last year, by 48.4 percent to only 1.1 million...
Moscow’s Efforts to Erase Circassian History Are Backfiring
Like the tsarist authorities who expelled the Circassians from the North Caucasus in 1864, an action many refer to as an “act of genocide,” and the Soviet ones who divided...
Caught Between Russians and Tatars: Can the Bashkirs Save Bashkortostan?
Outnumbered in their republic by ethnic Russians and nearly equaled by ethnic Tatars, the Bashkirs of Bashkortostan, the product of Joseph Stalin’s first great act of ethnic engineering, have responded...
Russian Fake News Operation Seeks to Generate Baltic Opposition to NATO Presence
Russian media outlets in Moscow and in the Baltic countries have stepped up their efforts to generate opposition among Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)....
Yezidis and Yerevan Complicating Moscow’s Efforts to Influence Kurds in Iraq and Syria
The convocation, last February, of a Kurdish conference in Moscow that included the Yezidis (Aranews.net, February 16), combined with new Kurdish-Yezidi claims that the Russian military has promised to provide...
Tatarstan’s Pursuit of Power-Sharing Accord With Moscow Energizes National Movements Across Russia
This summer, the first extension of the Republic of Tatarstan’s ten-year power-sharing agreement with Moscow runs out. Kazan is currently pursuing another extension and possible modifications to the accord. In...
Russians Increasingly Prepared to Use Firearms Against Police
Russians currently own approximately 25 million guns, according to Moscow experts; and while only about 20 percent of these are registered with the authorities as the law requires, most Russian...
Islamicized Armenians in Turkey: A Bridge or a Threat?
Groups whose identities do not fit the mold others have for them often become problems for both their host countries and the different communities of which they are a part....
Cossacks Fighting Moscow’s Expanded Efforts to Make Them Ethnic Russians
From the Russian Empire through the Soviet Union to the Russian Federation today, the central government of that country has always viewed Cossacks as part of the Russian nation, something...
Regional Statistics—But Not Moscow’s—Point to Russia’s Demographic Collapse
Rosstat, the agency of the Russian government responsible for assembling and publishing statistics, increasingly issues figures at variance with reality. This restoration of a Soviet-era pattern simultaneously makes it more...
Russian Regions Erecting Statues to Those Who Resisted Muscovite Expansion
Efforts by non-Russian countries to shed Moscow-imposed monuments—from the destruction of Vladimir Lenin statues in the Baltic countries in 1991, to Ukraine’s current effort at de-communizing the public space in...
Lithuanian Popular Militia Expands to Defend Against Russian Threat
The Donald Trump administration has repeatedly suggested that the true measure of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member country’s commitment to the Alliance—and hence of the Alliance to it—is...
Foreword — Decline, Decay and Disintegration: Russia’s Future in the 21st Century
Russia currently faces three existential challenges that already point to its decline, decay and even disintegration in the coming decades. It has an economy oriented to the past rather than...
Central Asian Countries Erecting New Cities to Cope With Population Explosion
Even though fertility rates have fallen in Central Asia over the last two decades, the earlier rise in the number of births means that the populations of these countries continue...
Beyond Two Percent: How Estonia is Strengthening Its Security and NATO’s
Multiple officials in the new United States presidential administration have suggested that not all member countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are paying their fair share for the...
Little-Known Turkmenistan About to Become Known for Its Big Problems
No post-Soviet republic is so little known beyond its borders as Turkmenistan. This relative obscurity internationally is the result of three legacies: its poverty in Soviet times; its relatively tiny...
Is Kaliningrad on Its Way to Becoming ‘Russia’s Crimea?’
Ever since Vladimir Putin’s Crimean Anschluss, Moscow analysts have occasionally worried that the West might respond by trying to seize the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad in revenge. Russian fears are...
Are Moscow and the West Swapping Positions on Belarus?
Since Alyaksandr Lukashenka became president of Belarus over two decades ago, Moscow has consistently viewed his country as its ally, difficult at times but one that, when the chips were...
Moscow Seeks to Reinforce Trump’s Belief That Force Alone Can Defeat Islamic State
For at least the last 15 years, there has been an intense debate in both Russia and the West about how radical Islam can be defeated. Some argue that force...
Independent Russian Analysts Argue Moscow Secretly Cooperating With the Islamic State
In seeking to extract benefits from a disaster, Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly been willing to actually manufacture such disasters so that their time, place and nature give him...
Are the Kremlin’s LPR and DPR About to Unite or Fight Each Other?
The Kremlin has deliberately obscured the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR), in eastern Ukraine, under a fog of confusion. As such, on a single...
Putin’s New Nationalities Policy Set to Fail Spectacularly
Russian President Vladimir Putin is putting in place a new approach to nationality issues within the Russian Federation, one that not only represents a departure from the first 16 years...
Struggle Over Tatar Language Impacts More Than Just Tatarstan
Tatarstan has long been considered the bellwether of nationality relations inside Russia. The republic has arguably held this status since at least 1920, when Joseph Stalin—then Soviet Commissar for Nationalities...
In Syria, Moscow Orchestrating Another ‘Circassian Genocide’
The Russian government killed or expelled nearly the entire Circassian nation from the North Caucasus in 1864, after this group resisted the Russian Empire’s advance there for more than a...
Is Bashkortostan About to Explode Along Ethnic Lines?
By population, Bashkortostan is the largest non-Russian republic in the Russian Federation. And yet, its particular ethnic mix has meant that this Middle Volga region has heretofore been far less...
Strategic Assessment: The Paradox of Baltic Security in 2016
The following political landscape piece is a part of Eurasia Daily Monitor’s special quarterly series of strategic assessments of developments across Eurasia. These pieces examine recent important developments and trends...
Russian Security Services Said Behind Electronic Circassian ‘Census’
In the past, Moscow has used population censuses to promote divisions within the Circassian nation. As part of its divide-and-conquer effort in the North Caucasus as well as to isolate...
Anti-War Protests in Russia; Anti-Russian Protests in Belarus
The Moscow media—and all too often news outlets in the West—paint Russians as a nation 100 percent behind Vladimir Putin’s war in Syria, and Belarusians as a nation fully behind...
Putin Restores Nationality-Based Units in Russian Military
Three times in the course of the last century, the Russian military has formed ethnically-based units. During World War I, the tsars created the famed “savage” division, which consisted of...
The End of the Line for the Trans-Siberian Railroad?
October 2016 marks the centennial of the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railroad (Trans-Sib), Russia and the world’s longest railroad line. Yet, no special celebrations are planned—in part due to Russia’s...
Is Putin Planning a ‘Hybrid’ Deportation of Crimean Tatars and North Caucasians?
Reportedly, the Kremlin is mulling an idea to relocate 500,000–1,000,000 people from the southern portions of the Russian Federation to the Far East and Siberia. This prospect has sparked fears...
Moscow Again Trying to Pit Ethnic Russians in Northeastern Estonia Against Tallinn
Moscow is again stirring the pot in northeastern Estonia, trying to pit the ethnic-Russian community there against Tallinn. And it is doing so in the classic tradition of Vladimir Putin’s...
Lukashenka Seeks to ‘Balance’ Moscow’s ‘Spiritual Influence’ in Belarus
Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has been carrying on a rapprochement with the Vatican and has even been pushing for Pope Francis to visit Minsk (Interfax, May 23, August 19). Such...
Generational Change in Central Asia about More Than Just Leaders
The death of Uzbekistan’s President Islam Karimov at 78 has focused attention on the issue of generational change both past and present across post-Soviet Central Asia. Given the central role...
Jamestown Analyst Paul Goble Cited by Washington Post
An August 6 editorial by the Washington Post cited writings by Jamestown analyst Paul Goble regarding Russia's continued military operations in eastern Ukraine.
China Quietly Displacing Both Russia and US From Central Asia
Since 1991, the influence of the Russian Federation in Central Asia has been on the decline, and many have assumed that the United States would move in to fill the...
Moscow Seeks to Put Ukraine’s Smallest Nationalities in Play Against Kyiv
The ethnic-Ukrainian share of Ukraine’s population is now greater than the ethnic-Russian share of the Russian Federation’s population—and significantly larger if one does not include Russian-occupied Crimea and Donbas in...
Brexit and Baltic Security—320,000 Balts May Have to Go Home
Many have speculated that the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union will have negative consequences for the countries of Eastern Europe in general and the Baltic States in...
Moscow ‘Bypassing’ Armenia to Reach Azerbaijan, Iran and India
Perhaps the most important geopolitical development of mid-July 2016 was not the continuing conflict in the South China Sea, the failed coup in Turkey, or terrorist violence in France—all of...
Is It Time for an Updated ‘Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations?’
The strength and longevity of the West’s anti-Communist effort during the Cold War rested on two alliances that no longer exist. The first was the alliance between those committed to...
Baltic Geography Presents Moscow With Three Distinct Challenges
Many in the West typically think about the three Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as a single undifferentiated whole. But in fact, they are quite different despite being...
How Lithuania’s Ham Radio Operators Outfoxed the Soviets in 1991
Dictatorial regimes of all kinds have always sought to control communications, especially between those in their own countries and the outside world. With the Internet, their ability to do so...
Minsk Fears Moscow May Organize Hybrid War and Color Revolution in Belarus
Many governments in the post-Soviet space fear they may be threatened by a color revolution; others are worried that they will become victims of a hybrid war. But Belarus is...
Tallinn–Helsinki Railroad Tunnel Could Transform Geopolitics of Northern Europe
In mid-June, the European Union pledged to provide one million euros ($1.13 million) to finance a preliminary study on the feasibility of constructing a railway tunnel between Tallinn and Helsinki,...
Moscow Offering Crimean Tatars Ersatz Autonomy
Having illegally occupied Crimea and worked to destroy the Milli Mejlis (the de facto quasi-governing assembly of the Crimean Tatars) and all other independent Crimean Tatar organizations, Moscow is now...
Strange Bedfellows: Latvian Nationalists and Ethnic Russians Both Want to Block Entrance of More Russians
It has often been remarked that politics can make strange bedfellows, bringing together groups that one could not imagine agreeing on anything. That is what has been happening in Latvia,...
Water Shortages Likely to Reduce Central Asian GDPs by 11 Percent
Although Central Asia as a whole has enough water to promote development, problems in sharing this critical resource among the region’s five post-Soviet republics—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan—are becoming...
Dagestan-Azerbaijan Relations: a New Flash Point in the Caucasus?
The Dagestan Days festival opens in Baku this week (May 12–13), during which ties between that republic in the Russian North Caucasus and Azerbaijan will be celebrated and new business...
Russian Money for Belarus: Not for a Base but to Limit Minsk’s Turn Toward Europe
Many observers have concluded that Moscow’s new $2 billion aid package to Belarus is part of a deal to allow Russia to establish a military airbase on the territory of...
Central Asia’s ‘Karabakhs’ May Be Even More Dangerous Than the Original
The renewed violence in Azerbaijan’s separatist region of Karabakh (see EDM, April 6) is attracting attention to three larger problems in other parts of the former Soviet space: the existence...
Resistance to Re-Imposition of Russian Draft in North Caucasus Growing
No region of the Russian Federation has a greater number of young men who could qualify to serve in the Russian military than does the North Caucasus, the combined result...
Resistance to Re-Imposition of Russian Draft in North Caucasus Growing
No region of the Russian Federation has a greater number of young men who could qualify to serve in the Russian military than does the North Caucasus, the combined result...
Uzbekistan Achieves Railroad Independence
Twenty-five years after gaining its political independence, Uzbekistan has become “railway independent,” with its residents now able to travel between one part of their Central Asian republic to another, by...
Izborsky Club Says Moscow Must Block Alliance of Baltic–Black Sea States
Twenty-five years ago, Moscow’s massive nuclear weapons stockpile could not prevent the Soviet Union from falling apart, because of a conjunction of domestic problems and opposition from abroad, the influential...
Moscow Once Again Trying to Put the Kurds in Play Against Turkey
The Kremlin is once again seeking to use the Kurds, the largest stateless national group in the world, for Moscow’s own purposes. In particular, Russia has opened a quasi-diplomatic representation...
Ethnic Russians Leaving Central Asia and With Them, Putin’s Hopes for Influence
Because Vladimir Putin has made the presence of ethnic Russians in other countries so central to his efforts to expand Moscow’s influence, their departure from any region or country means...
Moscow Shifting from Direct Aggression to Building a Fifth Column in Ukraine
Given Moscow’s desire to get out from under the sanctions regime and the almost equal desire of some Western governments to declare victory and lift it, the Kremlin appears likely...
How Much Does Baku Control Ethnic Azerbaijanis Inside Russia?
Moscow’s plans to push through a law establishing criminal penalties for those who deny that the 1915 events in the Ottoman Empire were a “genocide” have sparked unusual dissent among...
Neither Turkmenistan nor Tajikistan Seen Able to Resist Islamic State
Neither Turkmenistan, which has maintained a policy of strict neutrality since the 1990s, nor Tajikistan, which hosts a Russian military base on its territory, has a military force capable of...
Nazarbayev Blocks Russian TV in Kazakhstan
In slightly over a generation, Kazakhstan has gone from being a republic in which ethnic Russians formed a plurality, to one in which ethnic Kazakhs form a two-thirds majority. But...
Armenia Facing Demographic Collapse
“ ‘All progressive humanity’ is concerned by the periodic reports about the disappearance of this or that type of plant or animal, [but] we are much less concerned about the...
Uncontrolled Movements of People in North Caucasus Threaten Russian Security
The Russian authorities have lost control over three key movements of people in the North Caucasus—from rural areas to the cities, from the North Caucasus region to Moscow and other...
Uncontrolled Movements of People in North Caucasus Threaten Russian Security
The Russian authorities have lost control over three key movements of people in the North Caucasus—from rural areas to the cities, from the North Caucasus region to Moscow and other...
‘A Syrian Echo in Azerbaijan’? Shiites, Police Clash in Nardaran
Clashes between the police and residents of the long-troubled Absheron peninsula city of Nardaran, on November 25–26, have resulted in numerous arrests and deaths. These deadly incidents have sparked concerns...
Kazakhstan Gives Russians a Taste of Their Own Medicine With New NGO Law
Vladimir Putin’s flagrant abuse of Russian laws governing the activities of non-governmental organizations (NGO) has led to the demonization and even closure of many of them. Such policies have, not...
New Challenges to and From the Muslim Communities of the Baltic Countries
The three small Muslim communities in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have had good relations both with the rest of the populations and the governments of these three Baltic countries. But...
Russian Flight From Russian Far East Again Increasing
Ethnic-Russian flight from the Far East is again increasing, after appearing to stabilize a few years ago. This development not only changes the balance of ethnic groups living there—few non-Russians...
Another Punished People, the Pontic Greeks, Posing New Problems for Moscow in Crimea
The Soviet government tried to force out the Pontic Greeks from the southern part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in the early 1920s, and then subjected that...
New Russian Book Says Only Ideological Approach Can Defeat Islamic State
A new 226-page book written by a group of scholars widely reputed to be close to the Russian security services argues that Islamic State (IS) is, first and foremost, an...
New Russian Book Says Only Ideological Approach Can Defeat Islamic State
A new 226-page book written by a group of scholars widely reputed to be close to the Russian security services argues that Islamic State (IS) is, first and foremost, an...
Is the Middle Volga About to Become a Second North Caucasus?
For the last several years, numerous Russian politicians, commentators and activists have repeatedly suggested that the ethnic and religious situation in Russia’s Middle Volga region—which includes the republics of Tatarstan,...
Is the Middle Volga About to Become a Second North Caucasus?
For the last several years, numerous Russian politicians, commentators and activists have repeatedly suggested that the ethnic and religious situation in Russia’s Middle Volga region—which includes the republics of Tatarstan,...
Lack of Roads in Russian Far East Limits Moscow’s Power Projection in Pacific
The absence of roads and railways connecting the strategically positioned Kamchatka peninsula, in the Russian Far East, with the rest of the country is undermining Russian national security and reducing...
Moscow Launches Hybrid ‘Rail War’ Against Latvia
Russia’s aggression against its neighbors is often called “hybrid” war because it makes use of techniques that give the Kremlin deniability in the eyes of some while allowing Russia to...
Russia’s Railways Not Ready for War
Even more than most continental powers, Russia for more than a century has relied on railroads to move massive amounts of men and materiel to respond to military challenges—a reflection...
Collapsing Guest Worker Transfer Payments Pushing Central Asia Into Perfect Storm
The collapse in the size of transfer payments from Central Asians working in the Russian Federation—they are down more than half from last year—is having a domino effect in the...
Threatened From Afghanistan, Central Asia May Win the Battle Only to Lose the War
Dual armed attacks shook Tajikistan, on the night of September 4, as militants allegedly connected to former deputy defense minister General Abduhalim Nazarzoda fired on a police station and a...
North-South Railroad Competitions Reordering Geopolitics of the Caucasus
For most of the post-Soviet period, politicians and pundits have focused on east-west transportation corridors in the southern Caucasus. But today, two north-south railway projects—one that would link Azerbaijan and...
Central Asia’s Border Problems Materialize Again
In recent weeks, tensions have been high and rising along Kyrgyzstan’s borders with Uzbekistan as well as Tajikistan—neither of which have been fully demarcated by the countries involved since independence....
Analyst Paul Goble Appears on RFE/RL’s ‘Power Vertical’ Podcast
Longtime expert on Eurasia and regular contributor to EDM Paul Goble appeared on RFE/RL's weekly "The Power Vertical" podcast, on Friday, August 7, to discuss the internal fragility of the...
Will Belarus Be Putin’s Next Target?
Both certain Belarusians and some Russian analysts are convinced that Vladimir Putin’s next target will be Belarus. They have their reasons, and these reasons are compelling: Taking Belarus would give...
Land-Locked Kazakhstan Plans to Build a Blue-Water Commercial Fleet
Kazakhstan plans to expand its shipping fleet on the Caspian Sea and to acquire, for the first time, a blue-water one (Np.kz, July 23). Its maritime strategy is aimed to...
Today’s Ethno-Regional Clans in Tajikistan Are Products of Soviet Nationality Policy
Tajikistan’s ethno-regional clans have played a key role in the political life of this Central Asian republic since 1991. These clans have their roots not so much in ancient and...
The Kerch ‘Curse’: Russian Occupation Makes Crimea an Island
By its illegal occupation of Crimea, Moscow has transformed that Ukrainian peninsula into an island, the second non-contiguous part of the Russian Federation and one that is already giving the...
Moscow’s Territorial Division of Central Asia in 1920s ‘Artificial,’ Tajik Historian Says
The Bolshevik government achieved two goals by dividing up the territory of Central Asia into various national republics—it undermined the Pan-Turkic aspirations of the jadids, and it helped break the...
Moscow Appears to Be Playing a Most Dangerous Game With the Islamic State
In the wake of terrorist attacks by the Islamic State (IS) across the Middle East and Europe, Russian diplomats and the Kremlin-controlled media have been working overtime to suggest that...
With Olympics Behind Them, Russian Officials Continue Their Destruction of Sochi
In the 18 months since the Sochi Winter Olympics, Russian entrepreneurs and Russian officials have taken advantage of the lack of international attention to increase their destruction of the natural...
With Olympics Behind Them, Russian Officials Continue Their Destruction of Sochi
In the 18 months since the Sochi Winter Olympics, Russian entrepreneurs and Russian officials have taken advantage of the lack of international attention to increase their destruction of the natural...
Shapsugs Increasingly Important Players in Circassian Struggle With Moscow
Most analysts concerned with the Circassian issue in the North Caucasus have focused on the three republics where subgroups of that nation are the titular nationalities—Adygea, Karachaevo-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria—or on...
Shapsugs Increasingly Important Players in Circassian Struggle With Moscow
Most analysts concerned with the Circassian issue in the North Caucasus have focused on the three republics where subgroups of that nation are the titular nationalities—Adygea, Karachaevo-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria—or on...
Moscow-Backed Terrorism Likely to Spread Across Ukraine
All eyes are currently on the actions of Moscow-supported units in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. Speculations abound as to when and where these forces will attack next and whether the...
Moscow Patriarch Says Ukrainian Faithful No Longer Obligated to Obey Kyiv
Both due to the other challenges Ukraine faces and because its leaders believe a democratic and European government should not become involved in religious affairs, Ukrainian officials have avoided tackling...
Putin and Latvia’s Latgale: Ethnicity as Explanation Vs. Ethnicity as Excuse
Vladimir Putin’s use of ethnicity to justify his actions in Ukraine has been widely accepted in the West but not commonly understood. That is to say, his claims that he...
Moscow Patriarchate Rapidly Losing Out in Ukraine—and Beyond
The Moscow Patriarchate is rapidly losing influence in Ukraine and may be dissolving from below. These trends could open the way to the formation of a single autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox...
Mufti Tajuddin Seeks to Make Himself and Then His Son ‘Muslim Patriarch’ of Russia
Many might dismiss the beating of a 57-year-old imam in rural Chuvashia (Regnum, May 7) as a minor local episode. But in fact, it threatens to open a dramatic, violent...
Moscow Readying Neo-Cossacks of Belarus for Use Against Lukashenka
Moscow has had little or no success in mobilizing ethnic Russians as a whole in Belarus against the current government in Minsk: the local Russian community, in almost all cases,...
Belarusians Bristle at Russian Land Claims on Belarus
Russian imperialists have insisted that more than any other place within the former Soviet space, Belarus is artificial. They reach this conclusion on the basis that Belarus is culturally related...
Politically Independent Cossacks Warned About Becoming Labeled ‘US Agents’
Mikhail Vederinkov, the presidential plenipotentiary for the North Caucasus Federal District, told a meeting of senior Cossack officials that they must clear any candidates for the position of ataman (chieftain)...
Politically Independent Cossacks Warned About Becoming Labeled ‘US Agents’
Mikhail Vederinkov, the presidential plenipotentiary for the North Caucasus Federal District, told a meeting of senior Cossack officials that they must clear any candidates for the position of ataman (chieftain)...
Moscow’s Pressure on Belarus Increasingly Counterproductive
Moscow’s increasing pressure on Minsk to hew the pro-Russia line is proving to be counterproductive in three ways: First, it has prompted President Alyaksandr Lukashenka to take on even more...
Turkish Circassians Reject Proffered Alliance With Kurds
Most ethnic minorities around the world are generally appreciative of support from other ethnic minorities, viewing such solidarity as useful to their cause. But there are exceptions, and one of...
Turkish Circassians Reject Proffered Alliance With Kurds
Most ethnic minorities around the world are generally appreciative of support from other ethnic minorities, viewing such solidarity as useful to their cause. But there are exceptions, and one of...
Russian and Uzbek Soldiers Reportedly Now in Turkmenistan to Counter Afghan Threat
In a measure of just how frightened Ashgabat is of the possibility that Afghan radical forces will invade Turkmenistan, it has reportedly allowed Russian and now Uzbekistani military personnel to...
Is Moscow Preparing for a New War Against Georgia?
President Vladimir Putin has been organizing so many military exercises in so many parts of the Russian Federation (see EDM, March 19)—a process that has required Moscow to shift units...
Is Moscow Preparing for a New War Against Georgia?
President Vladimir Putin has been organizing so many military exercises in so many parts of the Russian Federation (see EDM, March 19)—a process that has required Moscow to shift units...
New Kinds of Language Issues Heat up Across Eurasia
For those long-accustomed to the idea that the situation in the former Soviet space resembles that of France, where an education minister once famously claimed that he could say at...
Russian Occupation Crackdown Against Crimean Tatars Intensifies
Now that Vladimir Putin has admitted that he seized Crimea by force rather than annexed it to Russia following the free expression of the will of its population (Euromaidan Press,...
Russian Orthodox Activists—Value in Deniability for the Kremlin
The Moscow Patriarchate’s subordination to the political will of the Kremlin has been evident for so long that it no longer attracts much attention. Patriarch Kirill and his entourage can...
Dagestan Risks Becoming a ‘Yugoslavia in the Caucasus’
Dagestan, the most ethnically complex republic in the North Caucasus, faces an ever greater risk that it will disintegrate as Yugoslavia did. This growing danger exists both because of the...
Dagestan Risks Becoming a ‘Yugoslavia in the Caucasus’
Dagestan, the most ethnically complex republic in the North Caucasus, faces an ever greater risk that it will disintegrate as Yugoslavia did. This growing danger exists both because of the...
‘Good Tsar, Bad Boyars’: Popular Attitudes and Azerbaijan’s Future
A commonly held view in Russia is that the government consists of “a good tsar and bad boyars.” That is, the population tends to have a positive attitude about whoever...
Unpublished Census Provides Rare and Unvarnished Look at Turkmenistan
Turkmenistan is perhaps the most opaque country of all the post-Soviet states, with the government exercising tight control over almost all information and publishing only those statistical figures that serve...
Is Moscow Putting the Talysh in Play Against Azerbaijan?
More than in most parts of the world, the former Soviet space is a place where battles about the present and the future are waged over the past. Most famously,...
Russian Think Tank That Pushed for Invasion of Ukraine Wants Moscow to Overthrow Lukashenka
Analysts at the Russian Institute for Strategic Research (RISI), a Moscow-based think tank that pushed hard for Russia to invade Ukraine (Nr2.com.ua, January 13), are now urging Moscow to overthrow...
Encouraged by Initial Russian Moves in Ukraine, Transnistria Now Fears for Its Future
No one was more encouraged by Russia’s annexation of Crimea and military moves in Donbas (eastern Ukrainian region encompassing the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces) than the leaders of Transnistria. This...
City on Russian-Azerbaijani Border Ready to Explode
Relations between ethnic Azerbaijanis and the Dagestani peoples in the North Caucasus republic’s southern city of Derbent have reached a boiling point. Two new acts of vandalism—one against a grave...
City on Russian-Azerbaijani Border Ready to Explode
Relations between ethnic Azerbaijanis and the Dagestani peoples in the North Caucasus republic’s southern city of Derbent have reached a boiling point. Two new acts of vandalism—one against a grave...
Regional Problems Ultimately Trump Ukraine as Defining Issue in Central Asia
Following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its intervention in other parts of Ukraine, many in Central Asia and beyond concluded that the foreign and domestic policies of the five Central...
Kazakhstan Risks Becoming a ‘Second’ Ukraine in 2015, Russian Linguist Says
Astana’s language and nationality policies have put Kazakhstan at risk of becoming a second Ukraine in 2015, according to Ilya Namovir, a Russian linguist who edits the “Russians in Kazakhstan”...
Who Is Behind the New Talysh-Language TV Broadcasts in Azerbaijan?
On November 29, a television station styling itself “the National Television of Talyshton” (“Tolyshystoni Millaiiya Vindasado”—TMV) began broadcasting in Azerbaijan under the direction of Talysh poet Zabig Madozh. One year...
Some Ukrainians Fear Moscow Planning ‘Bessarabian Republic’ in Odesa
Since this summer, rumors have swirled that Moscow plans to create a Bessarabian People’s Republic on the territory of Ukraine’s Odesa Oblast. Some analysts have suggested that this would allow...
Russia to Shift Rail Route to Avoid Going Through Ukraine
Russia frequently seeks to reroute oil and gas pipelines and railway routes in order to bypass those neighboring countries that it hopes to put pressure on. In turn, the West...
Would Kyiv Create a Crimean Tatar Battalion?
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Mustafa Cemilev, the longtime leader of the Crimean Tatar national movement who now serves as the presidential plenipotentiary representative for Crimean Tatar affairs, have been...
Putin Puts Gagauz in Play Against Moldova and the West
By meeting with the leaders of the pro-Moscow Moldovan Socialist Party last week (November 4) (kremlin.ru, November 5), Russian President Vladimir Putin has sent the kind of signal to the...
Moscow Using Budapest to Put Rusins in Play Against Kyiv
In its efforts to promote secessionist ideas among the half-million-strong Rusin community along Ukraine’s Western border, Moscow is simultaneously pursuing three goals. First, it is forcing Kyiv to divert its...
Moscow Launches Second Effort to Marginalize Crimean Tatar Mejlis
Because the Crimean Tatars and their assembly, the Mejlis, have opposed the Russian Anschluss of their homeland since the beginning, Moscow and the Russian occupying authorities on the Ukrainian peninsula...
How Moscow Is Playing the Russian Autonomy Card in Kazakhstan
In the world of labor union–business relations, it is commonly understood that, oftentimes, the threat of a strike, as long as it is credible, can achieve more than an actual...
Crimea’s Consequences for Russia’s Non-Russians—A Net Assessment of Long-Term Nationalities Trends Within the Russian Federation Since the Start of 2014
Not surprisingly, most people have focused on the consequences that Moscow’s Anschluss of Crimea has had for the people of that Ukrainian peninsula, for Ukraine, for Russia’s relations with the...
Putin’s Cutbacks in Health Care Send Russian Mortality Rates Back Up
Russia has now fallen to 51st place among the countries of the world in terms of the effectiveness of its medical system, behind Azerbaijan and Belarus. This decline reflects Vladimir...
No More International Flights From Russian-Occupied Crimea
As a result of the confluence of two developments, one welcome and encouraging and the other dangerous and worrisome, the airline that had maintained a route between Simerfopol (the capital...
Iranian Rail Links and the Geopolitics of the South Caucasus
Both Armenia and Azerbaijan are seeking to link their national railways with those of Iran, something that could be an economic lifesaver for Yerevan and an additional outlet for Baku’s...
Chisinau Says Pro-Moscow Provocations Ahead
Mihai Balan, director of Moldova’s Intelligence and Security Service (SIS), says the organization has evidence that Moscow is planning to stage provocations in his country in the coming weeks, in...
The Cossacks of Russia: Between Myth and Reality
This week (September 7), more than 300 Cossacks, Russian Orthodox hierarchs, Moscow officials, and researchers assembled in the Russian North Caucasus city of Stavropol. They gathered to discuss the enormous...
Kremlin Said to Be Developing Plan for Partitioning Georgia
Since the start of this year, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has invaded Ukraine, annexed Crimea and pushed for Ukraine’s “federalization.” The severe international concern caused by these actions was further compounded...
Hot Issue – Lies, Damned Lies and Russian Disinformation
Executive Summary The Russian Federation uses extensive propaganda, outright lies, and—most importantly—disinformation as part of the hybrid warfare it is waging against Ukraine and the West. Disinformation combines truth, what...
Moscow Set to Use Karakalpak Separatism Against a Pro-Western Tashkent
The Russian government, which has used ethnic minority challenges against Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Ukraine to punish regimes whose foreign and domestic policies are at odds with Moscow’s now seems...
Tensions Between Georgian and Armenian Churches Escalate
The Ukrainian events have demonstrated that when religious passions enter into a conflict between two nations, those passions can divide closely related peoples as well as transform the conflicts from...
Eurasian Union Can Live With Armenian Occupation of Azerbaijani Lands, Moscow Expert Says
Many commentators in Moscow, Baku and Ankara have expressed the hope that the inclusion of countries in the South Caucasus in Moscow’s Eurasian Economic Union (EaEU) will lead to the...
Moldova’s Gagauzia: A Model for Resolution of Karabakh Dispute?
Over the last 25 years, many proposals have been suggested for the resolution of the Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Among them have been a swapping of territories between...
Circassians Portray Russians as Occupiers; Russian Bloggers Complain
In the aul (village) of Afipsip in Adygea, Circassians are preparing to erect a statue of Kizbechu Sheretluko, a Circassian who fought the Russian advance into the North Caucasus in...
Circassians Portray Russians as Occupiers; Russian Bloggers Complain
In the aul (village) of Afipsip in Adygea, Circassians are preparing to erect a statue of Kizbechu Sheretluko, a Circassian who fought the Russian advance into the North Caucasus in...
Jailed Environmentalist ‘Real Hero of Russia,’ Mitrokhin Says
Last week, Yevgeny Vitishko marked his 40th birthday in a Russian prison where he is serving a three-year sentence, because he exposed the environmental damage Vladimir Putin and his entourage...
Moscow Opens Terrorist Training Base in Crimea, Cemilev Says
Ukraine’s intelligence service has identified five centers within the Russian Federation where Moscow is recruiting and training mercenaries and diversionists to work against Ukraine in the eastern portions of that...
Moscow Behind Plans for Central Asian Energy Grid Bypassing Uzbekistan
Moscow is using much the same strategy to punish and rein in Tashkent for its pro-Western tilt that it has used against Kyiv: promoting separatism in Karakalpakstan (see EDM, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com,...
Transcarpathian Rusin Leader ‘Does Not Exclude’ Using Force Against Kyiv
Most Ukrainians and international observers are focusing on Russia’s invasion of southeastern Ukraine or on the possibility that Moscow will use forces from Moldova’s Transnistria to create a “Novorossiya” (“New...
Moscow Draws a Religious Line in the Sand in Ukraine
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says that the West is opposing Moscow in Ukraine because Russia is returning to Orthodoxy. Whereas other Russian commentators suggest that Moscow must fight in...
From East-West to North-South: Moscow’s Actions in Ukraine Reignite Talk of a Baltic–Black Sea Union
For most of the last half-millennium, the lands between Moscow and Berlin have thought of themselves and been thought about by others almost exclusively in terms of an east-west axis,...
Moscow to Send Draftees From Crimea to Russian Far East, and Ukrainian Turncoats to the North Caucasus
The Russian government, like its Soviet predecessor, has a long history of sending draftees to places far from their homes and using non-Russians as cannon fodder in conflicts of one...
Looming Generational Change in Central Asian Leadership
Not for the first time, a website has reported the death or incapacitation of a Central Asian leader only to have the report swiftly taken down and denied (see the...
Putin Too Clever by Half on Delaying Russian Referendum
Vladimir Putin has suggested that a referendum by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, hitherto scheduled for May 11, should be postponed (Kyiv Post, May 7). This suggestion is already winning...
Despite Russian Attacks, Crimean Tatars and Mustafa Cemilev Will Not Retreat
In sharp contrast to his handling of Western leaders in the course of the Ukrainian crisis, Vladimir Putin and the Russian occupation authorities in Crimea have consistently underestimated the Crimean...
Moscow Closes Okhotsk Sea to Outsiders
In a move that both exacerbates international conflicts in the Western Pacific and suggests how Moscow plans to proceed in the Arctic, Russian President Vladimir Putin has closed to all...
Joining Islamic Conference Could Help Kyiv Defend Crimean Tatars
Mustafa Cemilev, a member of the Ukrainian parliament and leader of the Crimean Tatar movement, says that Kyiv will seek membership in the Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC—formerly called the...
Chechen Population Set to Explode
Much has been made in Moscow and the West in recent months about falling fertility rates—the number of children per woman over a lifetime—among the Muslim nationalities of the North...
Chechen Population Set to Explode
Much has been made in Moscow and the West in recent months about falling fertility rates—the number of children per woman over a lifetime—among the Muslim nationalities of the North...
Moscow Using Sub-Ethnic Groups at Home and Abroad
Most Western analysts accept as fundamental the ethnic divisions that were reified by Soviet leaders and consider Moscow’s divide and rule strategy only in terms of them, focusing for example...
Russian Occupiers Looting Crimean Museums
A Ukrainian parliamentarian has called for the United Nations to intervene and stop the looting of museums in Crimea by the Russian occupation authorities, an action that he says raises...
Moscow Threatens Ukraine From the West
Following the Russian Anschluss of Crimea, most Ukrainian, Russian and Western commentary has focused on the possibility that Moscow will use a similar strategy to move into the predominantly ethnic-Russian...
A Crimean Anschluss Threatens the Moscow Patriarchate
If Moscow absorbs Crimea, as now seems likely, this illegal act will pose a serious threat to the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church. Indeed, the annexation of Ukrainian...
Crimean Crisis Increases Importance of Links Among Tatars
Moscow had hoped that the Kazan Tatars would promote the Russian Federation’s agenda in Crimea both by appealing to the Crimean Tatars for calm and by dispelling the latter’s fears...
Is Surkov Readying a New Challenge to Kazan?
Vladislav Surkov, the Kremlin’s overseer of the breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and a man who recently discussed building a bridge between Russia and Crimea that could serve...
Immigrants Seen Triggering Clashes Along the Volga
The influx of migrant workers from Central Asia and the South Caucasus and of workers from the North Caucasus has triggered clashes in Moscow and other Russian cities, but soon...
Kazan Tatar Call for Maidan in Russia Touches Moscow’s Deepest Fears
An article in a Russian online military journal reports that some Kazan Tatar nationalists and Islamists are calling for the launch of a Euromaidan-style protest movement inside the Russian Federation....
Fertility Rates in North Caucasus Falling and Growth Rates Soon Will as Well
Despite widespread fears and even hysteria among Russians, fertility rates—the number of children per lifetime per woman—are falling among the peoples of the North Caucasus and now approach those of...
Fertility Rates in North Caucasus Falling and Growth Rates Soon Will as Well
Despite widespread fears and even hysteria among Russians, fertility rates—the number of children per lifetime per woman—are falling among the peoples of the North Caucasus and now approach those of...
Balts Again on Collision Course With Moscow Over Georgia
Moscow commentators have already denounced the Baltic countries for supposedly helping to organize the Ukrainian revolution (windowrussia.ruvr.ru/2014_01_24/Baltijskij-sled-na-kievskom-evromajdane-5748/), and they have condemned Estonia, along with Finland, for supposedly stirring up the...
Putin’s Dangerous Game: Promoting Nationalism at Home and Abroad
The nationalism of one nation almost inevitably comes into conflict with the nationalisms of others, precisely because its celebration of its uniqueness and even superiority inevitably offends those who have...
Moscow Sees Northern Sea Route Vitiating Great Silk Road
When the Soviet Union disintegrated, many in Europe and the United States talked about building an updated version of the Great Silk Road to link China with Europe via the...
In the Shadow of Sochi: The North Caucasus in 2013
Russian officials have repeatedly complained over the last 12 months that analysts in both Russia and the West will link, appropriately or not, everything that takes place in Russia before...
In the Shadow of Sochi: The North Caucasus in 2013
Russian officials have repeatedly complained over the last 12 months that analysts in both Russia and the West will link, appropriately or not, everything that takes place in Russia before...
Moving Central Asian Cossacks to North Caucasus Threatens Russians and Non-Russians Alike
A proposal by a Russian church leader in Stavropol to resettle the Semirechye Cossacks, who are seeking to move from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, to the North Caucasus has several damaging...
Moving Central Asian Cossacks to North Caucasus Threatens Russians and Non-Russians Alike
A proposal by a Russian church leader in Stavropol to resettle the Semirechye Cossacks, who are seeking to move from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, to the North Caucasus has several damaging...
Belarusians in the Russian Federation Increasingly Nationalistic
Many Russian and Western analysts have assumed that Belarusians and Russians are so similar ethnically that the nearly 1 million Belarusians living in the Russian Federation will inevitably identify with...
Moscow’s Effort to Debunk Circassian ‘Genocide’ Backfires
Russian efforts to discredit Circassian arguments that that nation was subjected to an act of “genocide” by Tsarist forces in 1864 in Sochi, the site of next February’s Winter Olympiad,...
Moscow’s Effort to Debunk Circassian ‘Genocide’ Backfires
Russian efforts to discredit Circassian arguments that that nation was subjected to an act of “genocide” by Tsarist forces in 1864 in Sochi, the site of next February’s Winter Olympiad,...
The ‘Orenburg Corridor’ and the Future of the Middle Volga
If Joseph Stalin had not drawn “the so-called Orenburg corridor, which cut off Bashkortostan from the Kazakh SSR [Soviet Socialist Republic],” the editor of the independent Kazan weekly Zvezda Povolzhya...
Tatarstan Has Long Had Its Own Foreign Policy
An article intended to discredit Tatarstan and the Tatars by suggesting that radical Islamists have made significant inroads in the Middle Volga has the unintended consequence of calling attention to...
Kazakh Language Comes into Its Own
A press conference by a regional leader in Kazakhstan, unsurprisingly, seldom attracts much attention. But a recent such press briefing by Nurlan Nogayev, the akim (governor) of the Western Kazakhstan...
Ever More Ethnic Russians are Becoming Islamist Militants
The October 21 suicide bombing of a Volgograd passenger bus was carried out, apparently, by a woman originally from the North Caucasian republic of Dagestan (see EDM, October 25). Nevertheless,...
Ever More Ethnic Russians are Becoming Islamist Militants
The October 21 suicide bombing of a Volgograd passenger bus was carried out, apparently, by a woman originally from the North Caucasian republic of Dagestan (see EDM, October 25). Nevertheless,...
Dagestan’s Plan to Bring Home Muslims Studying Abroad Unlikely to Work
Dagestani leader Ramazan Abdulatipov last week (October 14) directed the district and city anti-terrorist commissions in his North Caucasus republic to launch a campaign to recall all Dagestani young people...
Dagestan’s Plan to Bring Home Muslims Studying Abroad Unlikely to Work
Dagestani leader Ramazan Abdulatipov last week (October 14) directed the district and city anti-terrorist commissions in his North Caucasus republic to launch a campaign to recall all Dagestani young people...
Georgia Will Not Turn Away from the North Caucasus, Expert Says
Following the August 2008 Russia-Georgia war, President Mikheil Saakashvili took unprecedented steps to reach out to the North Caucasus (see EDM, May 9, 2012). His government launched multiple “soft power”...
Georgia Will Not Turn Away from the North Caucasus, Expert Says
Following the August 2008 Russia-Georgia war, President Mikheil Saakashvili took unprecedented steps to reach out to the North Caucasus (see EDM, May 9, 2012). His government launched multiple “soft power”...
Moscow Sees an Echo of Pre-War Prometheanism in Crimea
Moscow has always been extremely sensitive to any indication that the Polish government or Polish organizations are expanding their influence in the post-Soviet space through the support of ethnic minorities...
Russia’s Muslims Increasingly Radicalized by Events in the Middle East
Russia’s Muslims continue to be radicalized not only by developments within their own community but increasingly by events in the Middle East, according to Yana Amelina, an analyst who works...
Russia’s Muslims Increasingly Radicalized by Events in the Middle East
Russia’s Muslims continue to be radicalized not only by developments within their own community but increasingly by events in the Middle East, according to Yana Amelina, an analyst who works...
Moscow Trumps Its Own Ethnic Card in Moldova
Moscow’s imposition of a wine embargo against Moldova as part of the Russian effort to dissuade Chisinau from pursuing closer ties with the European Union is not working as the...
Is Chuvashia about to Trigger a New ‘Parade of Sovereignties?’
No protest demonstration or statement from the opposition generates as much concern in the Russian capital as any suggestion that the republics and regions of the Russian Federation may be...
Uzbekistan Faces Civil War, Possible Disintegration, Tashkent Scholar Says
Over the past six weeks, the independent FerganaNews.com portal has conducted an online discussion, sparked by an article of the leader of the “Birdamlik” opposition movement, Bahordir Chorniyev, on the...
Cossacks Now Patrol Half of Stavropol Krai: Police Adjuncts or Something More?
Cossack units are now patrolling the streets in 12 of the 26 districts of Stavropol krai as well as in Moscow and other Russian regions. Their presence suggests they are...
Cossacks Now Patrol Half of Stavropol Krai: Police Adjuncts or Something More?
Cossack units are now patrolling the streets in 12 of the 26 districts of Stavropol krai as well as in Moscow and other Russian regions. Their presence suggests they are...
Moscow Seen ‘Losing’ Ukraine and Belarus Just as It Earlier ‘Lost’ the Baltic Countries
By pursuing the short-term profit goals of Russian oligarchs out of the conviction that this will promote Russia’s interest rather than considering the possible impact of such an approach on...
Kazan Denounced for Starting a New ‘Parade of Sovereignties’
Pro-Moscow activists and commentators have been universally critical of Tatarstan’s new nationality policy concept, a document adopted on August 1, which defines Kazan as the chief protector of Tatar national...
Kazan Exploits Russia’s Nationality Policy in Ways Moscow Never Intended
Just as the Republic of Tatarstan did routinely under its former President Mintimer Shaimiev, Kazan has again taken a Moscow policy and transformed it in a way that is very...
Circassians Mark 250th Anniversary of Resistance to Russian Aggression
Much has been and will be said about the 150th anniversary of the Circassian “genocide” by Russian forces that will be marked in 2014 when the site of that mass...
Circassians Mark 250th Anniversary of Resistance to Russian Aggression
Much has been and will be said about the 150th anniversary of the Circassian “genocide” by Russian forces that will be marked in 2014 when the site of that mass...
More Chechens Fleeing Chechnya ‘at Peace’ than Had Fled Chechnya ‘at War’
Nearly 10,000 Chechens have sought political asylum in Germany since the start of 2013, an unprecedented number that is nearly six times as great as the flow a year earlier—and...
More Chechens Fleeing Chechnya ‘at Peace’ than Had Fled Chechnya ‘at War’
Nearly 10,000 Chechens have sought political asylum in Germany since the start of 2013, an unprecedented number that is nearly six times as great as the flow a year earlier—and...
Are There in Fact ‘15,000 Radical Islamists’ in Crimea?
A retired Ukrainian intelligence officer who attracted attention a month ago by calling for the formation of a Russian-Ukrainian corps to fight for the Syrian government now claims that there...
Crimea’s Post-1991 Autonomy ‘Not for Tatars but Against Them,’ Expert Says
A discussion sparked by calls from some Ukrainian nationalists to transform the Crimean Autonomous Republic into the 27th oblast of Ukraine has led to a remarkable admission by a Ukrainian...
Turkey’s Crimean Tatars Reach Out to Their National Homeland
The leaders of the several-million-strong Crimean Tatar diaspora community in Turkey are increasingly focusing on Crimea. This trend encourages Crimean Tatars living in Crimea to conclude that they have an...
Circassian Military Traditions Still Keeping Diaspora Strong
The 500,000 Circassians in the North Caucasus have long drawn strength and encouragement from the continuing vitality of the 5-million-strong Circassian diaspora in the countries of the Middle East. A...
Circassian Military Traditions Still Keeping Diaspora Strong
The 500,000 Circassians in the North Caucasus have long drawn strength and encouragement from the continuing vitality of the 5-million-strong Circassian diaspora in the countries of the Middle East. A...
Will Siberian Tatars Finally Win Recognition as a Separate Nation?
Just as was the case in Soviet times, ethnic groups in the Russian Federation have a chance to gain some collective benefits only if they receive official recognition by the...
Cossack Separatism Again on the Rise
Sixty-eight years ago this week, the Western allies forcibly returned to the Soviet Union more than 2,000 Cossacks who fought on the German side against Stalin during World War II....
Paul Goble quoted by The Times of Central Asia
Paul Goble was quoted by The Times of Central Asia in an article about the politically volatile situation in Central Asia.
Nine Potential ‘Karabakhs’ in Central Asia Heating Up
That the ethnic and political borders in Central Asia do not correspond is widely recognized; but the region’s nine ethnic exclaves, territories within the borders of one country that are...
Foreign-Backed Jihadist Movement in Kazakhstan Now Threatens Nearby States as Well
The jihadist network in Kazakhstan, inspired and financed by al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the Caucasus Emirate, has shifted from a loose grouping of largely autonomous jamaats into a unified movement...
Crimean Tatars to Protest Ukrainian Actions on Deportation Anniversary
Tomorrow (May 18) marks the 69th anniversary of Joseph Stalin’s deportation of the Crimean Tatar nation from their homeland on trumped-up charges of collaboration with the Germans during World War...
Could EU-Style ‘Ethno-Cultural Zones’ Reduce Tensions in the North Caucasus?
An increasing source of tension and conflict in the North Caucasus is the fear among many of the regional language communities that they face extinction through assimilation—a potentially explosive fear...
Could EU-Style ‘Ethno-Cultural Zones’ Reduce Tensions in the North Caucasus?
An increasing source of tension and conflict in the North Caucasus is the fear among many of the regional language communities that they face extinction through assimilation—a potentially explosive fear...
Tajikistan Now Jamming a Russian Radio Station
In yet another sign of growing tensions between the Russian Federation and Tajikistan, Dushanbe has begun jamming a Russian radio station located on the grounds of the Russian military base...
Politicization of Islam in Crimea Threatens Peninsula’s Stability
Islam is being politicized in an unusual and somewhat unexpected way in Crimea. Certain Crimean Tatar leaders have been using the existence of Islamic groups on the peninsula to advance...
Re-Opening the Talysh Question in Azerbaijan: Armenian, Iranian and Russian ‘Traces’
The launch of a Talysh-language radio station based in the Armenian-occupied territories but directed at the members of that ethnic minority elsewhere in Azerbaijan is part of the latest chapter...
Moscow Puts Moldova’s Bulgarian Minority into Play Against Chisinau
For more than two decades, Moscow has exploited the tensions between Transnistria and Chisinau to try to bring Moldova to heel. More recently, it has sought to use Moldova’s Gagauz...
Circassians Anticipate Russian Provocations before Sochi Games
A week ago (April 2), Georgian Defense Minister Irakly Alasania said he “does not exclude the possibility” that there will be terrorist acts in the run up to the Sochi...
Circassians Anticipate Russian Provocations before Sochi Games
A week ago (April 2), Georgian Defense Minister Irakly Alasania said he “does not exclude the possibility” that there will be terrorist acts in the run up to the Sochi...
Gagauzia’s Head Urges Russia, Turkey and Azerbaijan to Be Guarantors of Its Survival
Moscow’s latest moves against Moldova, including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s call for opening a Russian consulate in Transnistria (politicom.moldova.org/news/russia-opening-a-consulate-in-transnistria-does-not-mean-recognizing-the-region-236048-eng.html), have attracted far more attention, but a speech by Mikhail Formuzal,...
In North Caucasus, Ethnic Russians Worse Off Where There Are More of Them, Moscow Sociologist Says
According to a Moscow sociologist, ethnic Russians are “paradoxically” more likely to suffer from discrimination in those republics of the North Caucasus where there are more of them. This finding...
In North Caucasus, Ethnic Russians Worse Off Where There Are More of Them, Moscow Sociologist Says
According to a Moscow sociologist, ethnic Russians are “paradoxically” more likely to suffer from discrimination in those republics of the North Caucasus where there are more of them. This finding...
Another ‘Damn Thing in the Balkans’—the Russian Cossacks Come to Comrat
The appearance of a detachment of Russian Cossacks in Moldova’s Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauzia has not only unsettled some residents there but also spotlights Moscow’s efforts to use the...
‘Tatarstanization’ of Russia Coming to an End, LDPR Activist Says
When the world was asking just over a decade ago “Who is Mr. Putin?” Mintimir Shaimiev, Tatarstan’s president at that time, said that “[Vladimir] Putin wants to do things in...
Immigration Could Tear Russia Apart, Especially if Regions Adopt Their Own Approaches
Many Russians believe that the continuing influx of guest workers from Central Asia and the South Caucasus represents a security threat to their country either because of the supposed contributions...
US, Chinese Plans for Rail Links with Central Asia Triggering ‘Railroad War’ and Reducing Russia’s Influence
United States plans to link the countries of Central Asia by new rail lines with Afghanistan. At the same time, Washington opposes neither the construction of a railway corridor from...
‘Secret’ Mosque Case Agitates Stavropol, Goes Viral on Russian Internet
Just as a fight in a bar in the Karelian city of Kondopoga in August 2006 helped power a dramatic rise in ethnic Russian activism against immigrants from the Caucasus...
‘Secret’ Mosque Case Agitates Stavropol, Goes Viral on Russian Internet
Just as a fight in a bar in the Karelian city of Kondopoga in August 2006 helped power a dramatic rise in ethnic Russian activism against immigrants from the Caucasus...
Moscow Patriarchate Expands Missionary Work among Non-Russians, Setting the Stage for Conflicts with Muslim Nations
One of the least noted aspects of the just completed meeting of the leadership of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church may prove to be the most significant...
Russian Nationalists on Both Sides of North Caucasus Fight
Politics surely makes strange bedfellows: Some Russian nationalists now take positions on the North Caucasus that would logically lead to the independence that many non-Russian nationalists in that region seek—in...
Russian Nationalists on Both Sides of North Caucasus Fight
Politics surely makes strange bedfellows: Some Russian nationalists now take positions on the North Caucasus that would logically lead to the independence that many non-Russian nationalists in that region seek—in...
Moscow Puts Rights Groups in North Caucasus in ‘Mortal Danger’
The Russian government’s requirement that human rights organizations receiving financial assistance from abroad register as foreign agents and the unwillingness of Russian businessmen to cross the Kremlin by making up...
Moscow Puts Rights Groups in North Caucasus in ‘Mortal Danger’
The Russian government’s requirement that human rights organizations receiving financial assistance from abroad register as foreign agents and the unwillingness of Russian businessmen to cross the Kremlin by making up...
Why Russia’s Governors Are Speaking Out About Ethnic Problems
Last Thursday, facing a deteriorating ethnic situation in his own krai, Stavropol Governor Valery Zerenkov said that it was time to end “the policy of minimizing” such developments or ignoring...
China’s Growing Political Role in the Caucasus
China’s economic role in the south Caucasus is expanding rapidly, with Beijing’s investments in Azerbaijan alone now approaching a total of one billion US dollars and its bilateral trade with...
From Tripwire to Something More? Moscow Increases Military Readiness in the South Caucasus
Moscow has increased the size and activity of its flotilla on the Caspian Sea and the readiness of its Gyumri base in Armenia over the last several months. Russian officials...
North Caucasus More Unstable and More Threatening to Moscow Now than a Year Ago
The North Caucasus is far more unstable and more threatening to Moscow’s control than it was a year ago, despite widespread acceptance of Vladimir Putin’s assertions to the contrary. There...
North Caucasus More Unstable and More Threatening to Moscow Now than a Year Ago
The North Caucasus is far more unstable and more threatening to Moscow’s control than it was a year ago, despite widespread acceptance of Vladimir Putin’s assertions to the contrary. There...
Putin’s Failure in the Middle Volga
Twenty years ago, in a now-classic study, “Gorbachev’s Failure in Lithuania,” historian Alfred Erich Senn documented the ways in which Mikhail Gorbachev failed to understand the diversity of challenges then...
Tatarstan’s Interest in UN Membership Angers Moscow
The World Congress of Tatars, an organization created 20 years ago to link Tatarstan with ethnic Tatars living outside the borders of that Middle Volga republic and one that has...
Bashkortostan Becomes Newest Russian ‘Hot Spot’
For the first time since the end of the Soviet Union, Moscow has dispatched internal troops to a republic outside the North Caucasus to suppress what it calls “nationalist band...
2010 Census Shows Fewer Russians, More Non-Russians, and Many Who No Longer Declare an Ethnic Identity At All
According to recent census results, the rate of the overall decline in the population of the Russian Federation nearly doubled during the past decade compared to the rate over the...
Activists in Middle Volga Protest Moscow’s Plans to End Obligatory Instruction in Non-Russian Languages
Activists in Chuvashia, Tatarstan and Bashkortostan went into the streets of the republic capitals on Saturday, December 1, with signs demanding that Moscow end its plans to drop obligatory instruction...
Russians Fleeing Adygea, Threatening Moscow’s Control of Region
Since the end of Soviet times, the percentage of ethnic Russians in the Circassian republic of Adygea has fallen from 78 percent to 52 percent, the result of the dominance...
Russians Fleeing Adygea, Threatening Moscow’s Control of Region
Since the end of Soviet times, the percentage of ethnic Russians in the Circassian republic of Adygea has fallen from 78 percent to 52 percent, the result of the dominance...
Circassians Will Not Follow Abkhaz Example, Adyge Khase Leader Says
Asker Sokht, president of the Circassian “Adyge Khase” organization of Krasnodar Krai, said this week that his nation will not seek to realize its rights by violating the sovereignty and...
Circassians Will Not Follow Abkhaz Example, Adyge Khase Leader Says
Asker Sokht, president of the Circassian “Adyge Khase” organization of Krasnodar Krai, said this week that his nation will not seek to realize its rights by violating the sovereignty and...
Tatarstan Divides Along Ethnic Lines over Renaming Republic
A proposal to drop any reference to nationality in the names of the non-Russian republics of the Russian Federation has deeply divided Tatarstan, the largest and most influential of these...
Will Georgia Continue to Seek to Influence Eurasian Countries?
Most of the non-Russian countries in the post-Soviet space have pursued foreign policies directed at defending their interests “in the framework of a limited geographic region,” two Russian analysts say....
Turkey Wants to Open a Transportation Corridor through Georgia to North Ossetia
Ankara wants to create a transportation corridor across Georgia to North Ossetia in order to establish links with regions of the Russian Federation and the states of Central Asia, Bulent...
Russia Considering Restoring Soviet-Era Law on Psychiatry, Opening Door to Political Abuse
Russian psychiatrists are pressing the Duma to return the Soviet-era law on psychiatric assistance that allowed doctors at Moscow’s Serbsky Institute and elsewhere to indefinitely detain and treat people whose...
Shaimiyev Criticizes Moscow for Seeking Return to Pre-Perestroika Relations
Mintimir Shaimiyev, the former president of Tatarstan whose views both reflect and help power the ideas of other non-Russian leaders, has issued a sweeping indictment of the current central Russian...
Shaimiyev Criticizes Moscow for Seeking Return to Pre-Perestroika Relations
Mintimir Shaimiyev, the former president of Tatarstan whose views both reflect and help power the ideas of other non-Russian leaders, has issued a sweeping indictment of the current central Russian...
Draft Language Law Could Ultimately End Non-Russian Language Instruction, Moscow Ethnographer Says
In the most serious attack on the status of the non-Russian republics and their titular nationalities since Soviet times, new legislation now under consideration in the Russian Duma would allow...
Is the Kremlin Writing off Middle-Aged Russians?
The Kremlin has created a new “agitation and propaganda” (agitprop) administration, which will focus on the elderly, whom the regime hopes to influence or at least keep in its corner...
Russian Exodus from the North Caucasus Continues
Ethnic Russians continue to leave the North Caucasus—albeit at a slower rate than in the 1990s—but it is an indication of just how far things have gone there. “About a...
Russian Exodus from the North Caucasus Continues
Ethnic Russians continue to leave the North Caucasus—albeit at a slower rate than in the 1990s—but it is an indication of just how far things have gone there. “About a...
‘The Opponents of Tatarstan Have Achieved Their Goal’
The Moscow media have been carrying out “a campaign to discredit” the political leadership of Tatarstan and undermine investment in that Middle Volga republic over the last six months, Damir-Khazrat...
‘The Opponents of Tatarstan Have Achieved Their Goal’
The Moscow media have been carrying out “a campaign to discredit” the political leadership of Tatarstan and undermine investment in that Middle Volga republic over the last six months, Damir-Khazrat...
The Vote in Georgia: Why Saakashvili Lost, Why Ivanishvili Won, and What This Means for the Future
The final results of the Georgian parliamentary elections were not announced yet when President Mikhail Saakashvili conceded that his party lost the majority of the vote; Bidzina Ivaanishvili has begun...
Ending of Draft in North Caucasus Threatens Moscow’s Control of Russian Federation
The Kremlin’s decision to stop drafting young non-Russian men from the republics of the North Caucasus threatens Moscow’s control both of that region and of the Russian Federation as a...
Ending of Draft in North Caucasus Threatens Moscow’s Control of Russian Federation
The Kremlin’s decision to stop drafting young non-Russian men from the republics of the North Caucasus threatens Moscow’s control both of that region and of the Russian Federation as a...
Can Putin Once Again Exploit the North Caucasus in 2012?
In the course of 2011, the North Caucasus remained Russia’s most unsettled region but what is likely to prove more significant, it became a problem not only for Moscow, which...
Can Putin Once Again Exploit the North Caucasus in 2012?
In the course of 2011, the North Caucasus remained Russia’s most unsettled region but what is likely to prove more significant, it became a problem not only for Moscow, which...
The Most Important Development in the North Caucasus in 2010: Russians Begin Talking About Letting It Go
The most important development concerning the North Caucasus in 2010 did not occur there or even on the streets of Moscow. Rather, it took place in the minds of an...
The Most Important Development in the North Caucasus in 2010: Russians Begin Talking About Letting It Go
The most important development concerning the North Caucasus in 2010 did not occur there or even on the streets of Moscow. Rather, it took place in the minds of an...