By Dmitry Shlapentokh (12/22/2010 issue of the CACI Analyst)

In early January 2010, the Kremlin decided to unify the North Caucasian autonomous republics of the Russian Federation with that of the Stavropol region, still mostly populated by ethnic Russians. The plan was a bureaucratic design by the Kremlin that supposedly would increase the ethnic/social cohesiveness of the region and the country and promote economic development in the region. This merger has received a strong response among locals who demanded that the Stavropol region remain a separate entity.

By Murad Batal Al-Shishani (12/22/2010 issue of the CACI Analyst)

On November 9, the Kavkaz-Tsentr website posted a video entitled “Address of Chechens Living Abroad to Organizers of fitnaht al-mujahedin”, showing unidentified people, one of whom was speaking in Chechen. He delivered a message connected to the recent split among Chechen rebels and the renunciation of the bayat (oaths of allegiance) to North Caucasus rebel leader Doku Umarov by rebel leaders in Chechnya.

By Richard Weitz (12/22/2010 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Russia’s growing alienation and isolation from Europe’s NATO-dominated security order was evident when President Dmitry Medvedev delivered a speech in June 2008 proposing a restructuring of Europe’s security architecture. In place of “a bloc politics approach that continues by inertia,” the Russian President raised the idea of convening a summit of European governments to draft a new legally binding European security treaty that would establish equal and indivisible security throughout the continent. At the recently completed Astana OSCE summit, Medvedev acknowledged that his efforts to restructure Europe’s security order had failed.