Alternative futures for Russia: the presidential elections and beyond

This paper by  Simon Saradzhyan and Nabi Abdullaev outlines scenarios for Russia’s short-term future with a focus on potential outcomes of the March 2012 presidential elections.

The authors note that terrorism and insurgency continue to threaten Russia’s national security.  After a relative lull of several years, the number of terrorist acts in Russia has been steadily increasing since at least 2008, according to the paper. Particularly worrisome is the resurgence of suicide bombings, since this has a strong psychological impact on the public.  The authors also note that some of the earlier attacks, including hostage-taking raids and raids on cities, were executed by groups with shakhids among them and that relied on corrupt or ideologically sympathetic law-enforcement officers to facilitate deployment to targets. Such raids are particularly hard for security services to stop. These attacks demonstrate the potential capability of these groups to attack high-security facilities, including nuclear facilities, according to the authors. The authors warn that terrorist networks may manage to acquire and use WMD in a major Russian city or in a series of coordinated attacks, including seizures of towns and hostage-takings, and trigger a massive, indiscriminate government response.

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