No change in the Russian Caucasus. The Winter Olympics amid a local war. OSW Study 47/2014

The North Caucasus has been the most unstable region of the Russian Federation since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Considering the scale of violence, the conflict in the region should be regarded as a local civil war between the Salafi Islamic armed underground and the secular authorities of the North Caucasus republics, supported by the security services. The Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who has made himself de facto independent from Moscow, holds a particularly strong position in the region and his ambition is to gain control of the neighbouring territories. The Russian leadership, which sees the security of the Winter Olympics in Sochi as its top priority, is facing a strategic choice between trying to integrate the North Caucasus with the rest of the federation, or isolating the region and accepting the existence of an informal "internal abroad” within Russia. The cultural processes taking place in the region, including Islamisation, de-modernisation and de-Russification, have been driving the North Caucasus ever further away from the rest of Russia, strengthening a mutual sense of foreignness.

Russian army justifies its reforms. OSW Commentary No. 109, 2013-06-25

The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation have been more active than usual since mid- -February this year, holding a number of previously unannounced military exercises aimed at testing combat readiness. They have also maintained, for many months, a Russian warship task force in the Mediterranean in connection with the civil war in Syria. Those activities stand out of the usual training routine of the Russian army. They have no precedent in Russia’s recent history in terms of the size of the forces involved, the measures employed, the territorial span, the number of exercises, or the scheduling and mode of carrying out the drills. The last combat-readiness tests on this scale were carried out by the Soviet army in the 1980s. The intensity of the Russian Navy’s activities in the Mediterranean and the military means engaged are comparable, in due proportion, with the activities of the Soviet fleet during the Vietnam war. The Russian leadership, including president Vladimir Putin, has been directly following the recent activities of the Russian Armed Forces and their evolution.

Russia and the Arab Spring: supporting the counter-revolution

Russia’s response to the Arab Spring ranged from apprehension to deep anxiety and diverged significantly from the US and the EU responses. While initially welcoming the popular demands for political reform in North Africa, the Russian reaction rapidly became more critical as a result of Western military intervention into Libya and the threat of the spread of Islamist extremism. It was these twin fears which prompted the Russian leadership to adopt an uncompromizing stance towards Syria. While geopolitical factors certainly played a role in driving Russian strategy, domestic political factors were also more significant. As the Russian leadership felt internally threatened by the growing opposition within the country, conflict in the Middle East highlighted the perceived flaws of the imposition of Western liberal democracy and the virtues of Russia’s own model of state-managed political order. There was, as such, a significant ideational and ideological dimension to the Russian response to the Arab Spring.

Application of Open Innovation Paradigm in Small and Medium Enterprises in Russia

The objective of this study is to explore how the Open Innovation paradigm is applied in by small and medium-size enterprises in Russia. The focus of the study is to understand how the processes of research and development and commercialization proceed in these kind of companies and to which extent they apply open innovation principles. Russian leadership makes certain steps for transition from the export of raw materials to an innovative model of economic growth. The research aims to disclose actual impact of these attempts. The closed innovation model and the erosion factors which lead to the destruction of an old one and emergence of new model are described. Features of open innovation implementation and intellectual property rights protection in small and medium enterprises are presented. To achieve the objective, a qualitative case study approach was chosen. Research includes facts and figures, views and opinions of management of studied companies related to innovation process in the company and in Russia in general. The research depicts the features of Open Innovation implementation by SMEs in Russia. A large number of research centers with necessary equipment and qualified personnel allow case companies to use external R&D effectively. They cooperate actively with research institutes, universities and laboratories. Thus, they apply inbound Open Innovation. On the contrary, lack of venture capital, low demand for technologies within the domestic market and weak protection of intellectual property limit the external paths to new markets. Licensing-out and creation of spin-off are isolated cases. Therefore, outbound Open Innovation is not a regular practice.

Análisis de la Política Exterior de Rusia en el marco de la Comunidad de Estados Independientes (CEI) como estrategia para la reinvención de su liderazgo en esa organización. Período 2000-2008

Este trabajo de grado hace un análisis de la capacidad que posee Rusia para reposicionar su liderazgo en el sistema internacional mediante la estrategia de política exterior implementada hacia los países de la Comunidad de Estados Independientes (CEI) durante el período 2000-2008.

Georgia y Rusia: la identidad como factor delimitador de los intereses y políticas de ambos estados con sus efectos en la Guerra de Osetia del Sur en 2008

Esta monografía se centra en evaluar mediante un enfoque constructivista, y a partir de una serie de hechos históricos, cómo la identidad construida por Rusia y Georgia fue el detonante de la Guerra de Osetia del Sur en 2008. Para tal objetivo, se partirá del supuesto que este conflicto fue el resultado de las diferencias entre ambos actores que desarrollaron una serie de políticas antagónicas, enmarcadas en una cultura de anarquía hobbesiana la cual se configuró tras la Revolución de las Rosas y la posterior llegada de Mijaíl Saakashvili al poder, puesto que Georgia se convertiría en el principal aliado de occidente en el Cáucaso, basado en un rol anti ruso y disidente de la influencia del Kremlin en la zona, divergiendo con el liderazgo de Rusia el cual se fundamenta en una identidad construida a raíz de su pasado imperial y hegemónico.

The economic and financial crisis in Russia – background, symptoms and prospects for the future. OSW Report 02/2015

The crisis in Russia’s financial market, which started in mid-December 2014, has exposed the real scale of the economic problems that have been growing in Russia for several years. Over the course of the last year, Russia’s basic macroeconomic indicators deteriorated considerably, the confidence of its citizens in the state and in institutions in charge of economic stability declined, the government and business elites became increasingly dissatisfied with the policy direction adopted by the Kremlin, and fighting started over the shrinking resources. According to forecasts obtained from both governmental and expert communities, Russia will fall into recession in 2015. The present situation is the result of the simultaneous occurrence of three unfavourable trends: the fact that the Russian economy’s resource-based development model has reached the limits of its potential due to structural weaknesses, the dramatic decline in oil prices in the second half of 2014, and the impact of Western economic sanctions. Given the inefficiency of existing systemic mechanisms, in the coming years the Russian leadership will likely resort to ad hoc solutions such as switching to a more interventionist “manual override” mode in governing the state. In the short term, this will allow them to neutralise the most urgent problems, although an effective development policy will be impossible without a fundamental change of the political and economic system in Russia.

Russia's Clandestine War against the United States: The Resurrection of the KGB and Russian Organized Crime Post 9/11

As American leadership has narrowly focused on fighting global terror in Iraq and Afghanistan, the modern version of the KGB, now known as the FSB, has been conducting continuous clandestine warfare operations against the United States. These warfare operations include strategic economic and political partnerships with anti-American entities worldwide and direct embedding of double agents in the US intelligence community. This paper investigates the role of Russia's cultural history leading to the merger of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and Russian Organized Crime (ROC). This paper concludes that the FSB is the most pervasive security threat to the United States and that employing Russian native and heritage speakers of Russian in the US intelligence community compromises US national security.

Cameron’s ‘renegotiations’ (or Russian roulette) with the EU: An interim assessment. CEPS Working Document No. 413/September 2015

Since the May 2015 general election when the Tory Party gained an absolute majority in the House of Commons, Prime Minister Cameron has put his campaign into high gear to get a ‘new settlement’ with the EU and invested much personal diplomacy to try to advance his objective. “What does he really want?” is still heard from other EU leaders, yet his agenda is taking rough shape with calls for results under four headings: “competitiveness, sovereignty, social security and economic governance”. These are only code words, however, for a mixed bag of more specific desiderata, which overall seem to be moderate. Impossible demands have been quietly dropped. Some items will still be tricky to negotiate while others can be placed on the agenda for ongoing EU ‘reform’ that can be widely supported. The Brussels side of the affair thus seems manageable, but the wild cards at home in the UK remain or are becoming even wilder. The standard hazards of the referendum instrument are now exacerbated by the unknown quantity of the new Labour leadership alongside the aggressively Eurosceptic majority of Tory MPs and the great migration crisis, which is translating now into a negative factor for the EU in UK opinion polls. This ostensibly very democratic process is looking more and more like a deadly serious game of Russian roulette.