Concerning the Law “On the Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine”: the Inevitable Conflict After the War

The interests of the Crimean Tatar national movement, which seeks to establish a full-fledged national-territorial autonomy, and Ukraine as a unitary state do not coincide. After the return of Crimea to Ukrainian control, a conflict between them is inevitable,

Balancing Policy: Official Positions of the Central Asian States on the Gaza War

The countries of Central Asia cooperate closely with Israel, primarily in the economic sphere. Following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, all Central Asian countries issued statements expressing “concern” about the escalation around the Gaza Strip. At the United Nations, the Central Asian countries, albeit cautiously, joined the majority that did not support Israel. On December 12, Central Asian countries (except Turkmenistan yet again) supported a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip for humanitarian purposes. Israel's representative at the UN deemed this resolution hypocritical as it did not mention the Hamas attack on Israel.

Prospects for Conflict Settlement in Transnistria

At present Transnistria indeed does not pose a serious military threat to Moldova, let alone to Ukraine, although it remains a base for Russian special services and can be used by them for subversive activities.

BESA Post-Soviet Conflicts Research Digest No. 4 (January 2024)

In January 2024, the analysts writing for the Post-Soviet Conflicts Research Program at BESA prepared eight materials concentrating on antisemitism, nationalism, and ethnic separatism in Russia, geopolitical alliance-making in the South Caucasus, and minoritarian electoral participation in Latvia.

A New Armenian Geostrategy: Trading Russia for Iran and BRICS?

By signing military cooperation agreements with France and the United States, Armenia have chosen to "Go West" as the most logical substitution to a major vector of Yerevan former foreign policy line. However, Armenia’s estrangement from Moscow, seems leading it to and entirely different direction - eastward, towards Iran and India.

Bashkir-Tatar Relations Against the Background of Protests in Bashkortostan

Given the high level of ethnic self-consciousness and political organization of the Tatars of Bashkortostan, attempts by the Bashkir national movement to ignore their interests while seeking independence for the republic will inevitably lead to conflict not only with the federal center, but also with the Tatar national movement.

Russian Nationalists’ Movement Against the Backdrop of War in Ukraine

The war and the anti-migrant campaign gave patriotic nationalists quite a dramatic increase in popularity at the level of social networks. The popularity of the Telegram channels of both media and individuals belonging to this segment of the political spectrum grew between 3 and 10 times by the end of 2022

Azerbaijan and Armenia: Political Stand in the Aftermath of October 7

The ongoing war between Israel and the radical Islamist terrorist movement Hamas has a substantial symbolic and practical impact on the domestic political discourse and foreign policy of countries involved in military and geopolitical conflicts in other regions of the world, including the South Caucasus

Sovereign Yakutia: Is Independence Possible for the Largest National Republic within the Russian Federation?

“Sakha” is the endonym of the Yakuts, a Turkic people whose ancestors migrated to what is now Yakutia in the 14th-15th centuries, partly displacing, partly assimilating the Evenks, who had moved into the area earlier and who spoke the language of the Tungus-Manchurian group, and the aboriginal Yukagir tribes. In the 17th century Russians entered Yakutia and after decades of armed struggle conquered it. In the 18th century, most Yakuts were nominally Christianized, resulting in the spread of Russian names and surnames among them.

The Influence of Anti-Semitic Ideology on Russia’s Legal Practices

The active synthesis of old communist ideology with far-right nationalist and anti-Semitic views in Russia has been going on for a long time, since Soviet era (for example, through the activities of the so-called unofficial nationalist and conservative “Russian Party” in the late Soviet period). We will consider only three examples of individuals from the Russian security services who played a significant role in promoting anti-Semitic ideology in the post-Soviet period, giving it a pseudo-intellectual character. The analysis of these three consecutive cases shows a gradual increase in the tolerance of the Russian state of open anti-Semitism on the part of influential figures with background in security services. This situation, as we will analyze in the second part of the paper, has also begun to influence legal practice in Russia.

PSCRP