Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov says the Tsarnaev brothers were framed by the FBI. Welcome to our column, Russia Update, where we will be closely following day-to-day developments in Russia, including the Russian government’s foreign and domestic policies. The previous issue is here. UPDATES BELOW Russia This Week: – From Medal of Valor to Ubiquitous Propaganda […]
Prison riots in Nizhny Novgorod Region and Bashkortostan in the last week have left one convict dead and more than a dozen injured. Welcome to our column, Russia Update, where we will be closely following day-to-day developments in Russia, including the Russian government’s foreign and domestic policies. The previous issue is here. UPDATES BELOW Russia […]
Staunton, April 30 – – Both Vladimir Putin and Ramzan Kadyrov have a deep interest in avoiding a complete break, the former because a new Chechen war would be “a moral catastrophe” that would undermine his myth and the latter because he would not survive without the enormous sums of money Moscow currently sends him, […]
Recently Stephen Sestanovich observed that whenever Putin faces a crisis he blames America and other governments for it. The latest example of this Putin tactic of misdirection and evasion is his claim that the US and other intelligence agencies actually conspired with Islamic terrorists to detach the North Caucasus from Russia. Although this charge will […]
Staunton, April 24 – Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s has made a statement that his forces should attack anyone, “Muscovite or Stavropol resident,” who might appear on the territory of the republic, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has suggested that the Islamic State is Russia’s main enemy may presage the opening of a third post-Soviet […]
Staunton, April 22 — Because of the nature of the conflict in Ukraine and the kind of people who have gone to fight there, Donbas veterans suffer from a special “Donbas syndrome” and constitute a bigger threat to themselves and to society when they return to Russia than did the veterans of the Afghan and […]
Welcome to our column, Russia Update, where we will be closely following day-to-day developments in Russia, including the Russian government’s foreign and domestic policies. The previous issue is here. UPDATES BELOW Russia This Week: – What Happened to the Slow-Moving Coup? – Can We Be Satisfied With the Theory That Kadyrov Killed Nemtsov? – All […]
Staunton, April 3 — Vladimir Putin has chosen a Duma deputy from Sverdlovsk with an FSB background and service in the notorious Alpha Group during his Chechen wars to be the head of the new Federal Agency for Nationality Affairs, an indication of how the Kremlin leader intends to use this new tool and why […]
Staunton, April 2 — Moscow now runs the federal subjects in much the same hyper-centralized way the Soviet Politburo did before Gorbachev’s perestroika, despite the name of the country now being the Russian Federation and Moscow routinely insisting that Ukraine which is less centralized than Russia, must “federalize,” according to Vadim Shtepa. After the USSR […]
Welcome to our column, Russia Update, where we will be closely following day-to-day developments in Russia, including the Russian government’s foreign and domestic policies. The previous issue is here. Russian law-enforcers have killed a suspected Islamist militant in Dagestan who was said to have sworn allegiance to ISIS. UPDATES BELOW Special features: – Alexey Navalny […]
