Carnegie Moscow Center
It is likely that Kyrgyzstan will become a member of the Customs Union. Moreover, Kyrgyzstan’s integration process with Russia was not substantially affected by the developments in Ukraine.
The situation around Crimea’s Tatars remains complicated despite Moscow’s evident readiness to compromise.
The “Islamic factor” in the Crimean crisis has received relatively little attention so far. However, the complexities of Crimean ethnoreligious realities should not be ignored.
The international focus must be on checking Putin’s provocation in Ukraine and preventing him from taking another step—in Kazakhstan or anywhere else—in his reintegration project.
The collapse of the Yanukovych regime in Ukraine became another posthumous chapter in the breakup of the Soviet Union. It will severely curtail Russia’s leadership ambitions in the post-Soviet space.
The second round of negotiations between the Syrian opposition and the government failed. As of now, the resolution of the conflict almost entirely depends on the position adopted by the external actors, whose relations, however, are now getting more complicated.
The terrorist threat to the Sochi Olympics may come from individuals who do not belong to organized and at least somewhat known terrorist groups.
Probably for the first time in the history of the Olympics, sports-related issues concerning the Games took a back seat to the issues of security. Keeping the Sochi Olympics safe is a matter of Russia’s political prestige, as well as the evidence of its ability to respond to terrorism.
The situation in Dagestan is chronically tense, and many analysts think that the civil war there continues. The conflict is accompanied by social Islamicization, as well as the growing influence of radical Islam and Salafi movements.
Two years after the Russian mass protests of 2011-2012, the democratic opposition has not been able to consolidate, while the Kremlin’s policy has become more repressive. Neither the society nor the authorities can definitively say whether such protests will be repeated.