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Russia Chechnya
Russia Chechnya Population: 1,200,000 (Source: United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the Russian Federation, 2007, Inter-Agency Transitional Workplan for the North Caucasus. The population of Chechnya according to the 2002 Russian census was approximately 1,100,000.) Political Rights: 7 Civil Liberties: 7 Status: Not Free Overview: Deputy Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov was promoted to the Chechen premiership in March 2006 and continued to strengthen his hold on power in the republic. Critics like investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered in October, have claimed that Kadyrov and his security forces torture suspected rebels, many of whom disappear without a trace. Rebel violence declined as Kadyrov consolidated his position, and two important rebel leaders were killed during the year, but the larger region remained unstable. Chechnya, a small, partly mountainous North Caucasus republic, has a history of armed resistance to Russian rule dating to the czarist period. In February 1944, the Chechens were deported en masse to Kazakhstan after Soviet leader Joseph Stalin accused them of collaborating with Nazi German forces. Officially rehabilitated in 1957 and allowed to return to their homeland, they remained politically suspect and were excluded from the region’s administration. After winning election as Chechnya’s president in October 1991, former Soviet air force Major General Dzhokhar Dudayev proclaimed Chechnya’s independence. Moscow responded with an economic blockade. In 1994, Russia began assisting Chechens opposed to Dudayev, whose rule was marked by growing corruption and the rise of powerful clans and criminal gangs. Russian President Boris Yeltsin sent 40,000 troops into Chechnya by mid-December of that year and attacked the capital, Grozny. -
Caucasus Emirates
Caucasus Emirates The threats against the 2014 Winter Olympics put a spotlight on the Caucasus Emirates, a separatist Islamic extremist group in the Russian Federation loosely aligned with Al Qaeda. Although the Emirates’ purported primary aim is to create a state independent of Russia, its increased incorporation of extremist ideology and anti-Semitism into its mission heighten its inclination for acts of terrorism, while providing fodder for its growth. Founded in 2007 by Doku Umarov, former president of a self-proclaimed Chechen secessionist government, the Caucasus Emirates serves as an umbrella group for a number of smaller extremist and separatist organizations operating out of the Caucasus area, which includes Chechnya and Dagestan. Its stated goal is to create an independent Islamist theocracy in the Muslim-populated areas of Russia. The organization brought together a number of independent groups that had been fighting Russia for independence for decades, but whose leadership had been largely decimated by Russian forces. Although it was founded in 2007, the only emerged as a more active organization with a series of claimed attacks between 2009 and 2011. These attacks included a June 2009 sniper attack on the Dagestan Ministry of the Interior that resulted in three deaths; a September 2009 suicide bombing in Makhachkala, Dagestan that resulted in twelve deaths; the bombing of a train that resulted in 27 deaths and 100 injuries; a March 2010 bomb of the Moscow metro that resulted in 40 deaths and 100 injuries; an August 2010 attack by 60 militants 1 / 4 on a Chechen village that resulted in 6 deaths and 24 injuries; and a January 2011 bombing of the Domodedovo airport in Moscow that resulted in 37 deaths and 180 injuries. -
ON the EFFECTIVE USE of PROXY WARFARE by Andrew Lewis Peek Baltimore, Maryland May 2021 © 2021 Andrew Peek All Rights Reserved
ON THE EFFECTIVE USE OF PROXY WARFARE by Andrew Lewis Peek A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Baltimore, Maryland May 2021 2021 Andrew Peek All rights reserved Abstract This dissertation asks a simple question: how are states most effectively conducting proxy warfare in the modern international system? It answers this question by conducting a comparative study of the sponsorship of proxy forces. It uses process tracing to examine five cases of proxy warfare and predicts that the differentiation in support for each proxy impacts their utility. In particular, it proposes that increasing the principal-agent distance between sponsors and proxies might correlate with strategic effectiveness. That is, the less directly a proxy is supported and controlled by a sponsor, the more effective the proxy becomes. Strategic effectiveness here is conceptualized as consisting of two key parts: a proxy’s operational capability and a sponsor’s plausible deniability. These should be in inverse relation to each other: the greater and more overt a sponsor’s support is to a proxy, the more capable – better armed, better trained – its proxies should be on the battlefield. However, this close support to such proxies should also make the sponsor’s influence less deniable, and thus incur strategic costs against both it and the proxy. These costs primarily consist of external balancing by rival states, the same way such states would balance against conventional aggression. Conversely, the more deniable such support is – the more indirect and less overt – the less balancing occurs. -
The Second Chechen War: the Information Component
WARNING! The views expressed in FMSO publications and reports are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. The Second Chechen War: The Information Component by Emil Pain, Former Russian Ethno-national Relations Advisor Translated by Mr. Robert R. Love Foreign Military Studies Office, Fort Leavenworth, KS. This article appeared in The linked image cannot be displayed. The file may have been moved, renamed, or deleted. Verify that the link points to the correct file a Military Review July-August 2000 In December 1994 Russian authorities made their first attempt to crush Chechen separatism militarily. However, after two years of bloody combat the Russian army was forced to withdraw from the Chechen Republic. The obstinacy of the Russian authorities who had decided on a policy of victory in Chechnya resulted in the deaths of at least 30,000 Chechens and 5,000 Russian soldiers.1 This war, which caused an estimated $5.5 billion in economic damage, was largely the cause of Russia's national economic crisis in 1998, when the Russian government proved unable to service its huge debts.2 It seemed that after the 1994-1996 war Russian society and the federal government realized the ineffectiveness of using colonial approaches to resolve ethnopolitical issues.3 They also understood, it seemed, the impossibility of forcibly imposing their will upon even a small ethnoterritorial community if a significant portion of that community is prepared to take up arms to defend its interests. -
APT28: a Window Into Russia's Cyber Espionage Operations? | Fireeye
SPECIAL REPORT APT28: A WINDOW INTO RUSSIA’S CYBER ESPIONAGE OPERATIONS? SECURITY REIMAGINED APT 28: A Window into Russia’s Cyber Espionage Operations? CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 3 APT28 TARGETING REFLECTS RUSSIAN INTERESTS ........................................................................................................................................................................ 6 APT28 interest in the Caucasus, Particularly Georgia ........................................................................................................................................................... 7 APT28 Targeting of the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) ....................................................................................... 8 APT28 Targeting of the Georgian Ministry of Defense ....................................................................................................................................... 9 APT28 Targeting a Journalist Covering the Caucasus ...................................................................................................................................... 10 APT28’s Other Targets in the Caucasus ...................................................................................................................................................................................... -
Nowhere to Turn but Yeltsin
Nowhere to Turn But Yeltsin JOHN LLOYD he Russian intelligentsia, dispirited, shorn of influence, and broke, had a Tcolloquium in Literaturnava Gazeta in February on its relationship with power. Led off by the greatest of the surviving 1960s bards, Bulat Okudzhava-who said that Yeltsin had tumed away from a group that had represented his staunchest supporters when he was elected five years ago, and now "scorned" it because he and his cronies could not bear criticism-the colloquium was in the main a melancholic series of reflections. Most agreed with Okudzhava by lamenting the loss of a leader who had held out a promise of renewal, yet those who remained reluctantly loyal-and none were robust about being so-fell back on a recognition that speech was now free and that life under the Communists would be worse. Their collective posture was well summed up by the writer Andrei Bitov: The mark of a member of the intelligentsia, he said, was to stand for certain moral and intellectual values, and to have nothing to do with power. Those members of the intelligentsia who had expected more and tried to help Yeltsin achieve it have usually had their fingers burned. Some have resigned, some were sacked, a few cling on for the usual reason that to leave would be to hand their place to someone worse. The most famous defector was the former prisoner of conscience Sergei Kovalev, who served as Yeltsin's Human Rights Ombudsman, protested loudly and with great courage against the war in Chechnya (he spent many weeks under bombardment in Grozny, the Chechen capital), and finally resigned from the last of his official posts earlier this year. -
The North Caucasus Ways Forward for Russia and the European Union
Building Stability in the North Caucasus Ways Forward for Russia and the European Union SIPRI Policy Paper No. 16 Neil J. Melvin Stockholm International Peace Research Institute May 2007 © SIPRI, 2007 ISSN 1652-0432 (print) ISSN 1653-7548 (online) Printed in Sweden by CM Gruppen, Bromma Contents Preface iv Map of the North Caucasus vi Table A.1. Data on the North Caucasus and the Russian Federation vii 1. Introduction: instability in the North Caucasus 1 The structure of this Policy Paper 6 2. The roots of instability in the North Caucasus 7 Incorporation and pacification 7 The North Caucasus in the Soviet Union 9 World War II and Stalin 11 The post-Stalin era and perestroika 12 The North Caucasus in the Russian Federation 15 Nationalist mobilization 15 The failure of state building in the North Caucasus 17 Religious revival 18 The first Chechen war 21 3. The North Caucasus in the Putin era 24 Putin’s new course 24 Replacing local elites 26 The second Chechen war 28 Russia’s ‘war on terrorism’ 31 The role of the international community 35 4. Prospects for the North Caucasus 37 National–territorial issues 37 Islam and Islamism 40 Governance in the North Caucasus 43 Socio-economic issues 44 Russia’s security policies 45 The North Caucasus and the European Union 46 5. Recommendations 48 Recommendations for the Russian Federation 48 Recommendations for the European Union 54 About the author 59 Preface For most people, the notion of conflict in the North Caucasus—a region within the Russian Federation, as distinct from the independent states of the South Cau- casus—is synonymous with Chechnya. -
The Yeltsin Regime
THE YELTSIN REGIME K.S. Karol Translated by David Macey Who holds power in Russia? The question seems ridiculous. Since 12 December 1993, the country has had an ultra-presidential constitution and its architect, Boris Yeltsin, supposedly rules virtually unopposed. For a number of reasons that are the subject of fierce controversy in Moscow, he cannot do so. Various explanations have been put forward: his health, his lack of judgement when it comes to choosing his collaborators, or his inability to decide on the right policies. Some are already laying bets that he will not last until his mandate expires in June 1996; others, like Gennady Burbulis hope that he will complete his mandate 'with dignity' and then leave the stage. But does Boris Yeltsin himself have any intention of doing so? The Russian President has surrounded himself with a much larger staff than that of the Central Committee of the defunct CPSU. The President's administration employs 40,000 people and has an annual budget of three billion roubles. It pays the salaries of deputies and senators, the judges of the Constitutional Court and the state prosecutors. Running this little empire is no easy task, particularly in that those who belong to it are not bound together by any party discipline or solidarity. The 'old democrats' who brought Boris Yeltsin to power can be counted on the fingers of one hand. They have been replaced by so-called administrators recruited on the basis of whom they know. Access to 'Tsar Boris' counts for much more than an individual's place in the hierarchy. -
Speaking of Suicide Bombers, I Stumbled Across
Understanding Suicide Terrorist Bombings in Russia PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo No. 155 May 2011 Mark Kramer Harvard University Suicide terrorist bombings have been a frequent phenomenon in Russia over the past decade. The large majority of these attacks have occurred in the North Caucasus— particularly Chechnya, Dagestan, and Ingushetia—but many such bombings have also been perpetrated in Moscow, including the powerful explosion inside the international arrivals hall of Domodedovo Airport in January 2011 that killed 37 people and wounded some 180. What lies behind these attacks? Generalizations about the motives of a large group of people are always hazardous, no more so than in this case. Except in the relatively few instances when attempted suicide bombings have been unsuccessful and the would-be attackers have not been killed by security forces, the perpetrators of suicide bombings are not around to reveal why they acted as they did. Some, but not all, of the suicide terrorists in Russia leave video recordings or notes that explain why they took such drastic action. But even when attackers’ posthumous testimony is available, it is often incomplete, deceptive, or obfuscatory. The testimony can be valuable, but in many cases it gives no more than a rough idea of why the attackers wanted to kill and die for their cause. Despite the difficulties of assessing the motives of suicide terrorists in Russia, a few points can be stated with certainty. First, nearly all of the attackers have been of North Caucasus origin or working with terrorist groups based in the North Caucasus. Second, since late 2007 the majority of suicide bombers have been from Dagestan and Ingushetia, although a considerable number of such attacks have still been perpetrated by Chechens. -
Chechnya's Status Within the Russian
SWP Research Paper Uwe Halbach Chechnya’s Status within the Russian Federation Ramzan Kadyrov’s Private State and Vladimir Putin’s Federal “Power Vertical” Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik German Institute for International and Security Affairs SWP Research Paper 2 May 2018 In the run-up to the Russian presidential elections on 18 March 2018, the Kremlin further tightened the federal “vertical of power” that Vladimir Putin has developed since 2000. In the North Caucasus, this above all concerns the republic of Dagestan. Moscow intervened with a powerful purge, replacing the entire political leadership. The situation in Chechnya, which has been ruled by Ramzan Kadyrov since 2007, is conspicuously different. From the early 2000s onwards, President Putin conducted a policy of “Chechenisation” there, delegating the fight against the armed revolt to local security forces. Under Putin’s protection, the republic gained a leadership which is now publicly referred to by Russians as the “Chechen Khanate”, among other similar expressions. Kadyrov’s breadth of power encompasses an independ- ent foreign policy, which is primarily orientated towards the Middle East. Kadyrov emphatically professes that his republic is part of Russia and presents himself as “Putin’s foot soldier”. Yet he has also transformed the federal subject of Chechnya into a private state. The ambiguous relationship between this republic and the central power fundamentally rests on the loyalty pact between Putin and Kadyrov. However, criticism of this arrange- ment can now occasionally be heard even in the Russian president’s inner circles. With regard to Putin’s fourth term, the question arises just how long the pact will last. -
The War in Chechnya and Its Aftermath
Baylis, Wirtz & Gray: Strategy in the Contemporary World 6e Holding a Decaying Empire Together: The War in Chechnya and its Aftermath On 25 December 1991, the Soviet Union officially was dissolved, with the former superpower splitting into 15 individual states. Each of these entities had been a constituent ‘republic’ of the USSR built around one of the major ethnicities within the country—Russia itself was dominated by Russians, Ukraine by Ukrainians, and so forth. The 15 republics, however, actually greatly simplified the diversity of the Soviet state, which contained hundreds of distinct ethnic groups, many of which dominated a small piece of territory within a republic. In many cases, these groups had certain limited rights to govern themselves locally and independently of the larger republic of which they were a part. The Chechens were one such group. Chechnya is located in Russia, in the mountainous Caucasus and bordering the now-independent country of Georgia. The total number of Chechens is small, although exact numbers are disputed—there are perhaps somewhat over two million Chechens, many of whom live outside Chechnya itself; the population of Chechnya itself is approximately 1.2 million, but this includes Ingush, Kumyks, Russians, and other non-Chechens. The great majority of Chechens are Muslims, and although Chechnya was incorporated into the Russian Empire in the nineteenth century (and Russia had influence in the region much earlier), their culture remains quite distinct from that of the Russians. During the Soviet period, Chechens were joined with another small Caucasian Muslim group, the Ingush, in a local governing entity. -
Soviet and Post-Soviet Wars: an Oral History Project" Is NOW ON-LINE! (Free Access)
H-Soyuz The Journal of Power Institutions in Post-Soviet Societies, Issue 20/21 - "Soviet and Post-Soviet Wars: An Oral History Project" is NOW ON-LINE! (free access) Discussion published by Elisabeth SIECA-KOZLOWSKI on Tuesday, April 21, 2020 PIPSS is pleased to present its latest issue dedicated to a new project it is launching on the occasion of its 15th anniversary: An Oral History of the Soviet Wars and Post-Soviet An open access oral history collection A participatory initiative https://journals.openedition.org/pipss/4783 Soviet & Post-Soviet Wars: An Oral History Project - Introduction Elisabeth Sieca-Kozlowski Soviet & Post-Soviet Wars: An Oral History Project An Open-Access Oral History Collection & A Participatory Initiative Soviet & Post-Soviet Wars: An Oral History Project - Testimonies Soviet-German War Alexander Gogun et Masha Cerovic Interview with Tatiana Markovskaia, - Veteran of the Lelchitsky Partisan Brigade (Soviet-German War) -, Conducted in Mirhorod, Poltava Region, Ukraine, 9 August 2008 (mix of RU,BEL,UKR) Soviet-Afghan War Ben McVicker Interview with Colonel Vladimir Furtună, Conducted in Chișinău, Moldova, May 2015 (RU) Cloé Drieu et Elisabeth Sieca-Kozlowski Interview with Robertas Krikstaponis, - Conscript (Soviet-Afghan War) -, Conducted in Vilnius, Lithuania, 25 August 2015 (RU) Cloé Drieu et Elisabeth Sieca-Kozlowski Interview with Petras Gaškas, - Sergeant (Soviet-Afghan War) -, Conducted in Citation: Elisabeth SIECA-KOZLOWSKI. The Journal of Power Institutions in Post-Soviet Societies, Issue 20/21 - "Soviet and Post-Soviet Wars: An Oral History Project" is NOW ON-LINE! (free access). H-Soyuz. 04-21-2020. https://networks.h-net.org/node/11423/discussions/6102564/journal-power-institutions-post-soviet-societies-issue-2021 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.