The Claws of the Bear: Russia’s Targeted Killing Program

Abstract

While there has been a good deal of attention and scholarly research on the use of targeted killings by Israel and the United States, there has surprisingly not been as much focus on the use of this strategy by the Russian government. In the interest of filling this gap, I provide the first, to my knowledge, quantitative examination of the effectiveness of Russia’s use of targeted killings. Building off of Morehouse (forthcoming), I model the impact of Chechen leadership losses from targeted killings on the later number and severity of Chechen militant attacks between 2004 and 2011. I find that at best, targeted killings had no significant impact, and at worst, they led to increases in the number and severity of militant operations.