On March 31, a Russian Joint Staff official, Lieutenant General Vasiliy Tonkoshkurov, made a surprise statement about the country’s conscription campaign at a press conference on the spring 2014 military draft campaign in Russia. During the event Tonkoshkurov announced that residents of the North Caucasus... MORE

Denials by Russia’s political-military leadership concerning alleged military involvement in eastern Ukraine are unsurprising and bear a resemblance to the official line on Crimea, until President Vladimir Putin recently confirmed their use. However, certain aspects of these official denials may shed some light on Moscow’s... MORE

The chief of the Federal Security Service of Russia (FSB), Alexander Bortnikov, stated at an April 9 meeting of the Russian security services and law enforcement agencies that the FSB thwarted a terrorist attack during the Winter Olympics in Sochi. “The prevention of the attack... MORE

The Russian authorities have admitted that the situation involving the insurgency in the North Caucasus has no clear positive outlook for the government. The Main Directorate of the Russian Ministry of Interior in the North Caucasus Federal District confirmed this assessment in a report on... MORE

Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to visit China for a summit in May. In advance of that meeting, Russian sources are again claiming that an agreement on a gas pipeline will be reached between Gazprom and its Chinese partners. Allegedly, both sides have agreed... MORE

Tensions have recently spiked not in the Republic of Ingushetia itself, but in the border area of neighboring North Ossetia, which is populated by ethnic Ingush. Residents of the village of Maiskoe rose up in protest after the law enforcement agencies of North Ossetia–Alania arrested... MORE

The Ukrainian crisis and the “reunification” of Crimea with the rest of Russia dominated President Vladimir Putin’s almost four-hour-long televised national phone-in—an annual PR performance that had been previously dominated by discussion of pensions, utility payments, inflation, wages and other internal “bread and butter” issues.... MORE

On April 4, Russia’s State Duma passed a law that simplifies the process of acquiring Russian citizenship. The new legislation enables people to obtain a Russian passport if they speak Russian and their immediate ancestors lived on the territory of the Russian Federation, Russian Empire... MORE

Pro-Russia armed groups fanned out during April 11–14 across Donetsk oblast, capturing the seats of authority in town after town: Slovyansk, Kramatorsk, Makiyivka, Mariupol, Horlivka, Khartsyzk, Yenakiyeve, Zhdanivka, and several others.  This is a conflict coordinated from Moscow, designed to create faits accomplis on the... MORE

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 Caucasus, with some Russian and Western experts suggesting that the Russian Federation no longer faces... MORE