profile

Tracing Patterns

Each issue unpacks a major news story from the world of Russian security — tracing the relationships, trends, and deeper meaning behind it — so you can move beyond surface-level news and better understand the threats coming from Russia today.

Featured Post

Rebellion in search of a leader

Happy Friday! The North Caucasus has become, sadly, a byword for instability. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has witnessed two wars between Chechnya and the federal centre (1994-1996 and 1999-2001), two jihadist state-building projects (the Caucasus Emirate and the Islamic State’s Caucasus Wilayah), and plenty of violence in between. Although organised insurgency collapsed in late 2017, there has been no shortage of anti-state violence since then. But it has yet to coalesce into...

Happy Friday! Did you miss me last week? I was supposed to be on holiday, which made a newsletter unlikely — and then my holiday got cancelled, which ironically made it even less likely. But if you can’t take a week off every now and then, you’re doing life all wrong! Now I’m back, and an important date is approaching: The release of my first (and only?) book! The Caucasus Emirate: Ideology, identity, and insurgency in Russia’s North Caucasus will be hitting bookshelves on 20 May. Dance, tiny...

I have not, to be honest, had much time to think about much of anything this week: All of my time has been consumed by an urgent client project. As a result, this week’s newsletter is coming to you a little late, and quite possibly a little undercooked. Nevertheless, the story of the week kind of picks itself: An attack on the police in Chechnya and the authorities’ reaction to it. So, with due apologies for haste, here’s what you’ll find this week: An explanation of what happened An outline...

Happy Friday! In January, I published an in-depth report on patterns in terrorism and state responses in the North Caucasus in 2024. That report drew on a unique, multi-source dataset of incidents that I compiled. If you’ve not read it already, you can dowload it here. It’s now the start of April, so it’s a good time to look at what has happened in the first quarter of the year and whether the trends are positive or negative. So that’s what I’m going to do in today’s newsletter! What I’ll...

Tracing patterns logo

Happy Friday! This week I’m going to provide a work-in-progress biography of Khuseyn Mezhidov, one of the Chechen commanders that Reuters identified as possibly involved in the Bucha massacre. There are a lot of unfilled gaps in his story — in part because I’ve mainly been focused on client work this week, and I’m taking a long weekend! — but some of the thus-far unanswered questions are interesting in and of themselves. What I’ll cover this week: Some background on who Mezhidov is Evidence...

Tracing patterns logo

This week, I want to talk about a new side project I’m launching: An in-depth investigation into Chechen involvement in the Bucha massacre in March 2022. I’m going to be working on (and therefore talking about) this for a while, so I want to give you a little insight into the reasons behind it, and where I’m starting from. Full disclosure: I am NOT good at sharing work in progress. On the one hand, I’m too much of a perfectionist to let something out of the door unless I’ve dotted every i and...

Tracing Patterns logo

Happy Friday! I hope your week has gone well. This week, I’ve been super busy working on evidence for a corporate raiding case and reworking an academic paper, so I’ve not had much time to think to devote to delving into the darkness of Russian security. However, one story has been bothering me all week. It concerns a recent counterterrorism operation in Dagestan, where the authorities claimed to have killed four suspected terrorists and arrested a fifth. The biggest problem with the incident...

Logo of Tracing Patterns

Welcome to the very first issue of Tracing Patterns, the newsletter that takes a particular story from the world of security and unpacks it — examining the relationships of those involved, analysing the underlying trends, exploring the broader context, and explaining the meaning of it all. In case you missed the announcement on Wednesday, this is what will be replacing Threat Dissection/Threat Monitor, in an effort to bring even more value to your inbox! This week, I’ll be focusing on the...

Hello! I hope your week is going splendidly! I'm dropping in to your inbox today to explain some of the changes to the newsletter that I am implementing, starting…this week. I have been thinking a lot about the newsletter’s goals and what people appear to find valuable. As a result, I’ll be making some changes to content and structure that I hope will lead to something you find even more valuable 🤞. The TL;DR version The thematic focus on Russian security issues will be the same, but the type...

Threat Dissection banner

The costs of the war in Ukraine for the North Caucasus Russian investigative media outlet Mediazona have published their latest dataset on Russia’s losses in its war on Ukraine. The headline figure is that they have identified 95,300 soldiers killed, including foreigners and volunteers. But what does the data say about the costs of the war for the North Caucasus? First, let’s look at the geographical distribution: Stavropol leads the way with 1,480 casualties, slightly ahead of Dagestan...