Ekaterina Stepanova

• Dr.Habil. (Doctor of Political Sciences)
• Head of Peace and Conflict Studies Unit at Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Russian Academy of Sciences

Stepanova, Ekaterina. Between War and Peace: Peace Process and Armed Conflict / M. Maghsoudi (preface to Pers. ed.) ; Sh.Mohammadi, A.Bijan (transl.). – Tehran : Peace Culture Charter, 1403 (2024). – 296 p. In Persian. This is the first Persian edition of an IMEMO book in decades. The book is devoted not so much to the problems of war and peace in...

The article is in Russian. For description, abstract, and key words in English, see: https://www.imemo.ru/en/publications/periodical/pmb/archive/2024/2-67/terrorism-and-antiterrorism-revisited/terrorism-and-antiterrorism-in-afghanistan-under-the-taliban-and-the-isis-khorasan-factor. Following the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan and t...

Armed violence does not end with the start of peace talks. It tends to go on, in different forms and with varying degree of intensity, during a peace process and becomes interconnected with it. The book explores interlinkages between, and mutual influence of, peace processes and armed violence in contemporary armed conflicts. On the basis of analys...

Stepanova E. CEASEFIRES AS A PART OF WAR, PEACE PROCESS, OR A “NO PEACE, NO WAR” FORMAT (in Russian), International Trends / Mezhdunarodnye protsessy, Vol. 21, No. 1(72) (2023), pp. 43-74. Ceasefires are increasingly relevant for contemporary conflicts and conflict management. During the first two decades of the 21st century, ceasefires also became...

Stepanova E., “Foreign Terrorist Fighters from Russia in and after Syria and Iraq: (Trans) National Trends and Threats”, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, vol. 46, no. 11 (2023), pp. 2214–2240. [Online first: 7 June 2021]. Despite the large number of foreign terrorist fighters from Russia in Syria and Iraq, the specifics of this phenomenon are of...

Stepanova E., “Mirnyi protsess: k soderzhatel'nomu opredeleniyu" [Peace process: on substantive definition], in Mirovaya ekonomika i mezhdunarodnyie otnosheniya [World Economy and International Relations], vol. 66, no. 9 (2022), pp. 5–18, in Russian. This article is also available in English: https://www.imemo.ru/index.php?page_id=1248&file=https:/...

Stepanova E., "Peace process: On substantive defintion", World Economy and International Relations, 2022, vol. 66, no. 9, pp. 5-18 (in English). DOI: 10.20542/0131-2227-2022-66-9-5-18. PDF: https://www.imemo.ru/index.php?page_id=1248&file=https://www.imemo.ru/files/File/magazines/meimo/09_2022/02-STEPANOVA-eng.pdf . Abstract: Prevailing formal, te...

Stepanova E., Golunov S. Peace processes, violence, and de facto states: introduction // Pathways to Peace and Security. 2022. No 1(62) Special Issue: Peace Processes, Violence, and De Facto States. P. 7-29. Only a quarter of outcomes of armed conflicts that ended during the first two decades of the 21st century resulted from negotiated peace or c...

The dynamics of peacemaking and the uneasy interplay of talks and violence in contemporary peace processes become increasingly nonlinear, complex, and unpredictable. In this special issue (no. 1(62), 2022), a mix of actors, dynamics and factors at the interface of peace processes and violence is narrowed down to contexts that involve de facto state...

In the early 21st century, non‐traditional security threats such as terrorism and narcotics trafficking drove the revival of post‐Soviet Russia's interest in and concern about the Afghan problem. This article outlines main security threats for Russia and Central Asia in Afghanistan during two decades of the United States (US) presence, identifies n...

This book asks how the international community can tackle the complex causes and consequences that the War on Drugs is intended to address. This question arises against the backdrop of the War on Drugs’ failure to significantly reduce the scale or impact of illicit drug production and trafficking as well as the lack of consensus on the way forward...

Stepanova E., Russia’s Approach to Afghanistan Following the Taliban Takeover, PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo no. 724, 22 November 2021, pp. 1-6. Full text in html: https://www.ponarseurasia.org/russias-approach-to-afghanistan-following-the-taliban-takeover/

Stepanova E., “Russia’s regional balancing and interests in the Middle East: Benefits, risks and implications for Europe,” Orient: German Journal for Politics, Economics and Culture of the Middle East, no. IV: External actors in MENA (2021), pp. 45–58. The main shift in Russia's Middle East policy, upgraded since 2015, has been a move away from We...

Chapter 10 assesses Russia’s position in the International Drug Control Regime. It explains that the country has undergone a shift in its dynamics and patterns of illicitly used drugs, and outlines Russia’s unique circumstances as a major global illicit drug market and the single largest country market for Afghan heroin. The chapter also elaborates...

In early 2019, former Afghan mujahedeen leaders and key strongmen of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance met in Moscow to discuss matters of war and peace with their sworn enemy, the Taliban. For Russia, this was the culmination of a long evolution from being a marginal post-Soviet player into a major diplomatic actor on Afghanistan and a supporter...

Russia was an integral part of the modern world’s first historical wave of terrorism, which lasted from the final third of the nineteenth century to the first decades of the twentieth century. Some historians and terrorism experts even consider the Russian Empire to be the ‘birthplace’ of terrorism. Indeed, in Russia, terrorism as a systematic tact...

Where does the Russian case or, rather, the two distinct periods of terrorism in Russia, stand vis-à-vis the world’s historical waves of terrorism, from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century? What are the key aspects specific to the main types of terrorism in post-Soviet Russia (i.e. terrorism by separatist-Islamist rebels i...

The book (in Russian) explores the interrelationship between ISIS and the flows of tens of thousands of foreign terrorist fighters to Syria and Iraq in the context of the ISIS’s role and place in the broader “global jihad” movement. It assesses main quantitative and qualitative parameters of the FTF phenomenon in Syria and Iraq, analyses the origin...

The Middle East is experiencing growing tensions as a result of competing geopolitical agendas and reciprocal meddling in the internal affairs of states. This volume – the outcome of a joint FEPS–IAI project – examines various means to foster de-escalation, dialogue and confidence-building in the Middle East. It does so by mapping the viewpoints, i...

This is a Russian translation of the report "Terrorism in Afghanistan: A Joint Threat Assessment" (2020) of the Joint US-Russia Working Group on Counterterrorism in Afghanistan

This is a Russian translation of a chapter "Militant-Terrorist groups in Afghanistan" published in "Terrorism in AFghanistan: A Joint Threat Assessment", Joint US-Russia Working Group on Counterterrorism in Afghanistan report (East-West Institute, 2020). Full reference in Russian: Степанова Е., Ахмад Дж. Вооруженные террористические группировки в А...

As Russia has become a major external player in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region due to its military engagement in Syria since 2015, it has acted as a balancer and mediator in several regional controversies and has continued to serve as a security guarantor for the Syrian state. This course has brought Moscow some practical dividends,...

The fact that, in 2015–2018, the world faced roughly the same peak number of state-based conflicts as 30 years earlier, during the collapse of the bipolar system, does not mean it faced the same conflict patterns. In the early 21st century, the main patterns of armed conflicts evolved significantly, to the point that it is fair to claim: the war of...

Report by Joint U.S.-Russia Working Group on Counterterrorism in Afghanistan. https://www.eastwest.ngo/sites/default/files/ideas-files/ewi-terrorism-in-afghanistan-joint-threat-assessment.pdf

The article explores the current stage of the Afghan peace process, including its specifics vis-à-vis previous negotiations on the Afghanistan, as well as the dynamic interplay of talks, primarily along the U.S.-Taliban track, and continuing use of force on the ground. It looks at some of the main external and internal, international and domestic i...

How much change should we really expect in global terrorism patterns and anti-terrorism after the demise of the physical core of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria and Iraq? On the basis of Global Terrorism Index data, this chapter explores the main layer of global terrorist activity. It also draws out key implications of a sharp...

PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo no. 618. Program on New Approaches to Research and Security in Eurasia, Inst. for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, George Washington University

This article (in Russian) in IMEMO journal "Pathways to Peace and Security" ("Puti k miru i bezopasnosti") reviews the 2019 Russian edition of Harold Saunders's latest book "Sustained Dialogue in Conflicts: Transformation and Change" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) and looks at how Track Two dialogue is employed in Russia's diplomatic practice. It explo...

The chapter explores how, despite earlier counterterrorism failures and two bitter wars in Chechnya, terrorism in Russia has declined in the 2010s. The Islamist-separatist terrorism problem that used to dominate national politics was degraded to a relatively peripheral issue that hovers at a level of persistent, but low-scale and increasingly fragm...

This edited collection surveys how non-Western states have responded to the threats of domestic and international terrorism in ways consistent with and reflective of their broad historical, political, cultural and religious traditions. It presents a series of eighteen case studies of counterterrorism theory and practice in the non-Western world, in...

While Russia’s Syria campaign initially was meant largely as a trump card in its troubled relations with the West, it also upgraded Russia’s standing in the region, which stimulated its growing interest in regional partnerships and in the Middle East per se. However, Russia’s relative success in gaining influence in the Middle East is due not only...

Stepanova E. (ed.), Humanitarian Challenges, Humanitarian Support and Human Protection in Armed Conflicts (Moscow: IMEMO, 2018), 331 p. [Pathways to Peace and Security, no. 1(54), 2018: Special Issue]; in Russian and English https://www.imemo.ru/en/jour/PMB/index.php?page_id=696&jid=8712 How does the evolving character of armed violence in modern...

Stepanova, Ekaterina. "Russia’s humanitarian role in conflicts in Donbass and Syria (in the context of “Responsibility to Protect”)," in Pathways to Peace and Security, no. 1(54), 2018: Special Issue: Stepanova E. (ed.), Humanitarian Challenges, Humanitarian Support and Human Protection in Armed Conflicts (Moscow: IMEMO, 2018), pp. 129-181. In Russ...

Stepanova, Ekaterina. "Humanitarian aspects of modern conflicts," in Pathways to Peace and Security, no. 1(54), 2018: Special Issue: Stepanova E. (ed.), Humanitarian Challenges, Humanitarian Support and Human Protection in Armed Conflicts (Moscow: IMEMO, 2018), pp. 11-43. In Russian. Abstract in English: The article explores how the changing natur...

Peter Wallensteen, Michel Wieviorka, Itty Abraham, Karin Aggestam, Alexander Bellamy, Lars-Erik Cederman, Jerôme Ferret, Jean Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer, Wilhelm Heitmeyer, Angela Muvumba-Sellström, Laurie Nathan, Hideaki Shinoda, Ekaterina Stepanova, “Violence, wars, peace, security,” in Rethinking Society for the 21st Century, Vol. 2: Political Reg...

This report seeks to explain the main trends in Russia’s evolving Afghanistan policy, with the focus on its regionalization, diversification, and new emphasis on diplomacy that culminated in Moscow regional peace consultations. It argues that none of Russia’s Afghanistan-related concerns can be alleviated as long as the armed conflict there continu...

https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498546546/The-Central-Asia%E2%80%93Afghanistan-Relationship-From-Soviet-Intervention-to-the-Silk-Road-Initiatives

Analytical report, in English. At a time when tension between the US and Russia is higher than it has been in decades, we cannot forget that the relationship between these two countries is among the most important for global security. On any number of issues, from arms control to the Middle East, failure of the U.S. and Russia to communicate will m...

Analytical report, in Russian. Доклад Российского совета по международным делам и Центра стратегических и международных исследований — результат работы ведущих российских и американских экспертов. Основная идея доклада состоит в том, что даже в обстановке геополитической напряженности и взаимного недоверия Россия и США должны сотрудничать. И не тол...

This edited volume is a special issue of the IMEMO’s journal “Pathways to Peace and Security”, № 1(52), May 2017. The volume includes articles in both English and Russian, and Contents and Preface in English. It is an academic effort, involving nine Russian and eight U.S. researchers, to explore the substance, underlying drivers, dynamics, implicat...

Stepanova E., "Russia and the United States in the fight against terrorism (comparative threats and approaches, Syria, Afghanistan, countering violent extremism)", pp. 13-54, in Pathways to Peace and Security, 2017, no. 1(52), [Special Issue]: Addressing Terrorism, Violent Extremism and Radicalization (Perspectives from Russia and the United States...

Stepanova E., "The ISIS factor and the Taliban movement in Russia’s policy on Afghanistan and in the broader region" (p. 213–237), in Pathways to Peace and Security, 2017, no. 1(52) [Special Issue]: Addressing Terrorism, Violent Extremism and Radicalization (Perspectives from Russia and the United States), edited by Ekaterina Stepanova, 262 p., in...

Full text: https://bishkekproject.com/memos/21. The Bishkek Project is an initiative by EurasiaNet.org with funding from the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies (SIWPS) at Columbia University. The publications on BishkekProject.com are the outcome of an international conference entitled “The Great Powers and Central Asia after Western Drawd...

In the early 21st century, violent extremism in general and Islamist violence in particular have been dominated by several jihadist movements that are regionally-based, primarily operate at regional level and have been undergoing the bottom-up regionalization process. All these movements are major combatants in the world's most intense regional arm...

Stepanova E., “Russia”. In: The Oxford Handbook of the Responsibility to Protect, ed. by Alex Bellamy and Tim Dunne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 409–428. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198753841.013.22. While Russia officially supports the humanistic principles underlying the responsibility to protect, it has criticized the expanded inte...

Does Russia have a Grand Plan for the Middle East? Russian military intervention in Syria was not an attempt to exert dominance as a hegemonic power in the Middle East. Far from promoting a unilateral approach, Moscow in fact supports multilateralism. Flexing its muscles in Syria was intended to make manifest to the United States and its allies tha...

Russian military intervention in Syria was not an attempt to exert domi-nance as a hegemonic power in the Middle East. Far from promoting a unilateral approach, Moscow in fact supports multilateralism. Flexing its muscles in Syria was intended to make manifest to the United States and its allies that multilateral negotiations can not take place in...

The chapter explores some of the trends, dynamics, and explanatory frameworks of terrorism and its main types to generalize about the directions of antiterrorism in the early twenty-first century. Of critical importance for categorizing terrorism and understanding its transnationalization is the ultimate level of a group's final goals – local, regi...

In the broader context of homegrown jihadist terrorism in the West, most interpretations of the 2013 Boston Marathon attack generally conform to the concept of “jihad of individual terrorism”. This concept effectively blurs the boundary between a network agent and a stand-alone “lone wolf”. The choice between the two often boils down to whether or...

The chapter analyzes in detail the main analytical approaches to the evolution of the transnational terrorist movement linked to and/or inspired by al-Qaeda. The choice of one or another analytical approach to the process of al-Qaeda's evolution and transformation in the years since 9/11 determines both how the actual threat posed by al-Qaeda-inspi...

Barcelona: CIDOB

¿Quién es el Putin 3.0 que ocupa nuevamente el Kremlin, y qué diferencias encontraremos con sus dos anteriores mandatos? ¿Cuáles serán los principales desafíos para Rusia en los próximos años, que condicionarán su política interior y exterior? ¿Existen oportunidades para la cooperación con Occidente, pese a las claras diferencias de intereses? Esto...

It is argued that the relationship between illicit drugs and the insurgency in Afghanistan cannot be captured by the simplistic concept of " narco-terrorism ". Rather, it has to be seen in terms of linkages of various types and degrees between two distinct phenomena. Drug trafficking may generate criminal violence in both peacetime and conflict set...

Stepanova E.A. [Terrorism: problems of definition and the functional-ideological typology], in Mirovaya ekonomika i mezhdunarodnyie otnosheniya [The World Economy and International Relations], no. 7 (2010), pp. 23–32, in Russian. DOI: 10.20542/0131-2227-2010-7-23-32. Fuzziness and nebulosity of the term "terrorism", the lack of its overall internat...

The book is a new and much expanded Russian edition of the author’s earlier research report (SIPRI/Oxford University Press, 2008). It integrates analysis of the main extremist ideologies of actors that employ terrorist means in armed conflicts (especially religious extremism and radical nationalism) with the study of their organizational forms. The...

Terrorism: Patterns of Internationalization provides a systematic analysis of the concepts of internationalization of terrorism. It looks into the stages and processes through which terrorism has developed in various parts of the world and binds together the facts to present a comprehensive picture of the distinguishing features that characterize t...

http://sk.sagepub.com/books/terrorism-patterns-of-internationalization/n10.xml

This series of reports examines urgent arms control and security subjects. The reports are concise, timely and authoritative sources of information. SIPRI researchers and commissioned experts present new findings as well as easily accessible collections of official documents and data. Terrorism in Asymmetrical Conflict: Ideological and Structural A...

Stepanova E. Gosudarstvo i chelovek v sovremennykh vooruzhonnykh konfliktakh [The state and the human in contemporary armed conflicts], International Trends / Mezhdunarodnye protsessy, vol. 6, no. 1 (Jan.–Apr. 2008), pp. 29–40, in Russian.

Stepanova E., [Russia's Humanitarian Potential and Economic Rehabilitation of Conflict Zones], in Mirovaya ekonomika i mezhdunarodnyie otnoshenija [World Economy and International Relations], no. 5 (May 2007), pp. 65–78, in Russian. DOI: 10.20542/0131-2227-2007-5-65-78.

Stepanova E. Organizatsionnyie formy global'nogo jihada [Organizational forms of global jihad], International Trends / Mezhdunarodnye protsessy, vol. 4, no. 1(10) (2006), pp. 95-104.

Stepanova E. Protivodeistviye finansirovaniju terrorizma [Countering terrorism financing], International Trends / Mezhdunarodnye protsessy, vol. 3, no. 2(8), pp. 66-73. In Russian.

The September 11 attacks opened a strategic window through which Vladimir Putin could use antiterrorism cooperation to redefine Russia's relations with the West. They also elevated peace building on Russia's list of security priorities.

The focus of this SIPRI Policy Paper is on the problems of countering and preventing terrorism used as a mode of operation in a number of violent conflicts around the world and of integrating anti-terrorism into the broader and more fundamental peace-building framework. The study explores not only the need to fight terrorism as a task for the secur...

Von Beginn der Kosovo-Krise an war Russland in seiner Eigenschaft als Mitglied der Kontaktgruppe für das ehemalige Jugoslawien, des UN-Sicherheitsrates und der OSZE aktiv in den Prozess der Konfliktbewältigung eingebunden. Zusammen mit den Vereinigten Staaten und der Europäischen Union wirkte Moskau bei den Gesprächen in Rambouillet und Paris mit....