Analyses

• Russia's historical campaign

  A series of articles about the policies of the Soviet Union and certain European countries towards Hitler's Germany have appeared in the Russian electronic and paper media since June, and especially in late August in connection with the approaching seventieth anniversary of the outbreak of World War II. In these articles, Russian historians, political scientists and journalists, as well as high-ranking state officials and representatives of the secret services and the armed forces, presented arguments which largely repeated the clichés of Soviet historiography. They justified and positively assessed the USSR's policy in the late 1930s, and accused Poland, the Baltic States, Great Britain and Ukrainian nationalists of having supported Nazi Germany.

• Tension escalates in the Northern Caucasus

  Violence has escalated in recent weeks in the eastern part of the Northern Caucasus, i.e. the region comprising Ingushetia, Chechnya and Dagestan. On 17 August in Nazran, Ingushetia, an attack against the local Interior Ministry headquarters took place, in which 25 people were killed and nearly 300 injured. In the second half of August, eight police officers were killed in three suicide attacks in the Chechen capital Grozny. In Dagestan, attacks against representatives of the institutions of force occur almost daily. Radical underground Islamic organisations are responsible for the current escalation of violence; however, the activities of the Russian institutions of force may also be responsible, as they have been seeking to destabilise the situation in the region in order to obtain additional powers in the fight against terrorism.