Patterns of violence thus far in 2025 comparable to last year
Terrorism-related violence in the North Caucasus in the first half of 2025 is similar to 2024, but not all the indicators are positive.
Happy Friday!
A couple of weeks ago, Kabardino-Balkaria was back in the news for all the wrong reasons, after two unidentified men attacked police officers in Nalchik. The incident left one attacker dead, another wounded and in detention, and one civilian and one police officer injured. The head of Kabarbino-Balkaria, Kazbek Kokov, vowed that there would be "no mercy" for those who "violate the constitutional order."
The incident is the latest reminder of the persistent instability that affects the region. But what is the broader context? As we're now into July, it's a good opportunity to look at trends in terrorism and insurgency across the North Caucasus for the year thus far.
With that in mind, here's what I'll cover this week:
- Overall patterns for 2025 resemble 2024
- Major events provide grounds for concern
- Ambiguous indicators of instability
Overall patterns for 2025 resemble 2024
If we look first of all at the number of incidents, then we see that the first six months of 2025 are broadly comparable to the same period of 2024. Thus, there have been 46 incidents across the entire region in H1 2025, compared to 50 in H1 2024. There has been a slight uptick in violence in Q2 compared to Q1 of this year – which pretty much cancels out the slight downturn reported for Q1 – but this can be considered, for want of a better phrase, natural variation. Dagestan and Ingushetia remain the main republics of concern, whereas the main changes are seen in Chechnya (where incident levels are down) and Stavropol Kray (the opposite).
The picture that emerges from casualty figures is more ambiguous. On the one hand, the number of casualties from incidents in Q2 of 2025 is considerably higher than the previous quarter: 22 compared to eight (using figures from the upper end of the estimate range). On the other hand, the half year figure for 2025 is down on 2024: 30 compared to 109. One obvious reason for that is the June 2024 attacks in Dagestan, which contributed 75 of those casualties, but removing that incident leaves the numbers broadly comparable.
We can look at those casualty figures in a slightly different way: Incidents in the first half of 2025 resulted in an average of 0.65 casualties per incident compared to 0.70 for 2024 (if the June attacks are excluded. That sounds positive, but the Q2 figures for 2025 are 0.88, compared to 0.38 for Q1.
Major events provide grounds for concern
If the overall figures do not point to a warning system flashing red, specific incidents in the last quarter nevertheless give grounds for concern, highlighting how the region is far from stable.
Dagestan witnessed a major incident in May, when a group of people attacked security services in Makhachkala using assault rifles. Accounts of the number of attackers varied, but at least five people (two attackers, three police) appear to have been killed and five to six injured – making it the largest incident by casualty figures in the quarter. Alarmingly for the authorities, the incident bore some similarities to those June 2024 attacks.
In Kabardino-Balkaria, there was also a major security service operation in May, with 48 people detained across 42 properties in Nalchik and Nartan. This was the kind of event that fuels suspicion: It was only reported well after it took place, and the relatives of those detained complained that the police had planted evidence during the searches.
The statistics also hide as much as they reveal. Chechnya, for example, looked relatively stable, but the one incident that occurred was certainly politically, if not statistically, significant. In April, teenager attacked a traffic police post in Achkhoy-Martan, wounding two (one of whom later died) before being shot dead by the police. The Chechen authorities blamed people in Turkey and Ukraine and responded in typically brutal fashion, parading the body of the attacker and punishing his family (I discussed that in this newsletter). Elsewhere, the statistical effectiveness of the security services was bolstered by detentions of people in Dagestan, Ingushetia, and Stavropol Kray for historical involvement in the insurgency.
Ambiguous indicators of instability
The overall conclusions from the data are fairly ambiguous: You can allay or stoke concerns by choosing different ranges or measures. The cautiously positive picture that emerged from the Q1 figures has not been sustained: The number of incidents has increased slightly and their lethality considerably, meaning that, overall, I think we are witnessing broadly comparable levels of instability.
Indeed, three points that I made in the assessment of Q1 hold true when looking at the first six months of the year. First, terrorism-related violence remains a persistent feature of the region's political landscape. We see continued violence, but at the same time it has not coalesced into something more sustained. Second, Dagestan and Ingushetia remain the primary areas of concern – although Dagestan to a much greater extent than Ingushetia. Third, the security services drive as much violence as anti-state actors, with them continuing to conduct broad sweeps and working to bolster their figures in questionable ways.