Outside of the Chechen situation (and even then), the current state of affairs in the Caucasus isn’t getting much play in the American press. What originally started as isolated nationalist uprisings on Russia’s southern fringes steadily became infiltrated by religious radicals and mafiosos, as nominally Muslim groups such as the Dagestanis and Circassians found their main financial support from Islamic militants and arms dealers.

German magazine Der Spiegel is running an excellent English-language series on “The Caucasus Battlefield” and the Russian government’s ham-fisted attempts to suppress uprisings in Chechnya, Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkariya. Terrorist attacks in the region are becoming more and more desperate, such as in Beslan, while Russian police and militias routinely torture innocents and lose local support due to massive corruption and their inability to protect.

Violence in the Caucasus region is one of the factors that threatens to tear Vladimir Putin’s Russian Federation apart, along with corruption, poverty and a host of other issues. On Sunday, November 6, Professor Ralph Buultjens of New York University and Cambridge University will be speaking on Russia: Putin in Decline? and will explain in-depth the issues facing Russia as part of his popular World Politics series.