On April 30, ethnic Shapsug representatives held a conference in Sochi. The Shapsugs are a tiny remnant of the numerous Circassian tribes who were once the sole inhabitants of the Sochi region and much of the western North Caucasus plains before the Russians overran the... MORE

The Russian propaganda machine described the death of each and every secondary member of the armed resistance movement in the North Caucasus as having done "irreparable damage to the insurgency." If the man killed in the fighting is among the volunteers from the Gulf States,... MORE

Russian law-enforcement agencies conducted a special operation today (April 29) in the village of Progress, located on the administrative border between Kabardino-Balkaria and Stavropol Krai. According to the National Anti-Terrorist Committee (NAK), 16 people suspected of involvement with the “armed underground” were killed in the... MORE

On April 21, Gazeta Yuga, a weekly newspaper that is published in Nalchik, reported on the continuing efforts of Circassian groups in Kabardino-Balkaria to help their ethnic kin stuck in the fighting in Libya. Some activists in the North Caucasus have proposed that Libyans of... MORE

Following the defeat of Nazi Germany in the Second World War, the Soviet government negotiated the massive handover of many of USSR citizens – even those who had emigrated before the war. Many of the Soviet citizens who found themselves in the West by the... MORE

The National Anti-Terrorist Committee (NAK) announced today (April 22) that among the militants killed yesterday (April 21) in a shootout with security forces near the village of Serzhen-Yurt in Chechnya’s Shali district was a Saudi national known by the nom de guerre Moganned who, according... MORE

Russia’s intelligence services reported on the night of April 18 that they had identified the body of Israpil Validzhanov, who was better known as Emir Hassan, the head of Dagestan’s Sharia Jamaat armed resistance movement, among four militants killed near the village of Tashkapur in... MORE

Aslan Kazakov’s description of Soviet tactics in the North Caucasus at the dawn of the Soviet era is strongly reminiscent of the modern reality in the region. “[In the 1920’s] officers of the local OGPU (Soviet secret police) department, jointly with detachments of state security... MORE

The Russian Internet catalogue of dissertations, Dslib.net, published a remarkable work by Aslan Kazakov, “The activities of the Kabardino-Balkarian security bodies in neutralizing the subversive actions of émigré organizations in 1920-1950.” The study was done in 2005, but its importance has only grown since then,... MORE