The leader of Azerbaijan, President Ilham Aliyev, arrived in Georgia, on November 5, for a two-day official visit (Vestnik Kavkaza, November 5). This was Aliyev’s first trip to Tbilisi in a decade, and the talks he held there with Georgian officials were particularly tense. Cooperation... MORE

Russian experts have reacted to the recent establishment of a group in the Ukrainian parliament called “For the Free Caucasus.” One of them, Vladislav Gulevich, has predicted that the Ukrainian political forces that want to detach the North Caucasus from Russia will fail because Ukraine... MORE

The now-annual extreme-nationalist “Russian March” in Lublino (a working-class district in Moscow, populated mostly by ethnic Slavs), on November 4—National Unity Day—saw a sharply reduced number of marchers this year. Last Wednesday’s march in the Russian capital had only about 700 participants, whereas previous years’... MORE

The West’s major centers of power—the European Union and the United States—have recently announced significant adjustments to their Belarus policies; and the underpinnings and implications of those changes are now being hotly debated by the Belarusian opposition and anti-regime analysts and commentators. In particular, the... MORE

Another name has been added to the list of Chechens killed outside Russia: Abdulvakhid Edilgeriev was shot dead last month in Istanbul’s Kayasehir district, which many Chechens have made their home. The murder took place in broad daylight—at about 1:30 p.m., on October 1. The... MORE

On October 22, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced the creation of a new Russian military base in the Arctic. This base will be located either on the Novosibirsk Islands or on Franz Joseph Land, and it will allow for 150 troops to live continuously on... MORE

The ongoing political and legal stand-off between the Georgian government and the opposition over the ownership of the Rustavi 2 TV channel (Rustavi 2, Media.ge, October 2; see EDM, October 26) has become even more tense as new wiretapped recordings surfaced on October 29. The... MORE

Chechen authorities claim that a group of 20 young Chechens and Ingush studying in Moscow tried to leave Russia for Syria and were stopped at the last moment. According to Chechen ruler Ramzan Kadyrov, Western security services are constantly seeking to undermine Russia’s prestige (Instagram.com,... MORE

On October 31, a Russian charter passenger jet, Airbus A321 Metrojet Flight 9268, disintegrated in midair some 23 minutes after takeoff from the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg, Russia, killing all 224 people on board, mostly Russian tourists. Metrojet Flight 9268 crashed... MORE

As part of a regional visit, the co-chairs (representatives of the United States, France and Russia) of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Minsk Group visited the Armenian capital of Yerevan on October 26. The next day, they traveled to Karabakh and met... MORE