Every year since 2009 the Council of Foreign Relations (the renowned American think tank behind the foreign policy magazine Foreign Affairs) has conducted a large survey of its fellows and leading foreign policy analysts in which participants are asked to predict what conflicts are most likely to flare up in the coming year. The latest of these surveys, the 2016 edition, picked out a region of the world that had never before been featured: Chechnya. Alongside this curious datum, we have another poll – this one conducted by Russia’s esteemed Levada sociological research centre – showing that between November of 2014 and November of 2015, the majority opinion of Russian citizens shifted from describing the situation in Chechnya as either ‘good’ or ‘difficult to say’ to describing it as either ‘tense’ or ‘critical’. If Chechnya were a mine-shaft, then Russians and policy analysts would be the canaries. So what are we to make of the growing agitation of both these communities? The easiest way to understand what’s behind this recent wave of concern is to …