The more the Kremlin tries to exert influence on the North Caucasus, the more radical the separatists will become.

The Kremlin has been caught off guard by a spike in violence in the North Caucasus over the past few months. One reason for this: The Kremlin had believed its policies in the region were successful.

Why did Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas come to Moscow?

The current chaotic situation in Chechnya, including last week's assassination attempt on the republic's president, Aslan Maskhadov, is not at all surprising. Signs of these events could have been foreseen several years ago, when the republic, led by Dzhokhar Dudayev, rushed into the whirlwind struggle for independence that the republic perhaps never really needed, desperately resisting the brutal and simultaneously amateur operations of the Russian political-military establishment sent to Chechnya in 1994 to restore constitutional order. But order was not restored. And the Chechen republic of Ichkeria completely immersed itself in independence. The essence of independence, the ultimate goal of achieving it, is in creating a national state. Doing this is harder than gaining ground in a partisan war against an army semi-paralyzed by politicians. The Chechens do not know how to build a state. And this is completely logical: There is no way to acquire experience for such a laborious and thankless task.