On Sept. 27, the People's Protection Units (YPG) claimed responsibility for killing Abu Omar al-Chechen, a leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), and 15 other members of the group. It could have been just another report on the never-ending skirmishes of the Syrian conflict if it hadn’t echoed miles away from the Middle East in another hotbed — the North Caucasus.

Conflicts, insurgency and terrorism plaguing the region since the breakup of the Soviet Union have always been aggravated by a complex ethnic mosaic. While Chechens and Circassians are probably the most well-known North Caucasus ethnic groups outside the region — due to their large diasporas abroad as well as two wars in the first case and the genocide issue in the latter — there’s one group whose regional profile is practically unknown but rising, which may have surprising implications for Russia’s Middle Eastern policy: the Kurds.

Although no strangers to the North Caucasus historically, they represent the smallest portion in its ethnic cocktail. The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the early 1990s resulted in a massive influx of Kurdish refugees to neighboring Russia, primarily to its southern and central regions. The 2010 census discovered there were about 23,200 Kurds and some 40,600 Yezidi, who self-identified in Russia as a separate people, though recognizing their Kurdish origins.

Over time, the Kurds established cultural centers in Russia’s two biggest cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg, to preserve their identity and culture. At the same time, their influence over regional sociopolitical processes remained fairly limited, thus keeping them off the radar of local officials. But with the ongoing war in Syria, tensions in Turkey and serious divisions in Iraq, the Kurdish issue acquires a greater international dimension for Russia.