On December 17, Ingushetia’s President Yunus-bek Yevkurov and the head of North Ossetia, Taimuraz Mamsurov, signed an agreement on developing good-neighborly relations between the two republics. The agreement stipulates a plan of joint actions for the republican governments and government controlled civil organizations in 2010.... MORE

Last year was for Russia both extraordinarily hard and very unlucky –but it saw strikingly little economic reforms and practically no political development. Opinion polls show that a significant majority of Russians (62 percent) consider it as worse than 2008, when the arrival of the... MORE

On December 22, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s representative in southern Russia, Vladimir Ustinov, gave his annual speech on growing security threats in the North Caucasus, addressed to the Federation Council in Moscow. In listing the most dangerous threats to the security of the Russian Federation,... MORE

In one of the worst terrorist attacks in the North Caucasus in recent months, six policemen were reportedly killed and 19 wounded yesterday (January 6) when a suicide bomber detonated a jeep at a transport police base in the Reduktorny district of Makhachkala, the capital... MORE

A massive flurry of official statements was released to the Russian mass media by politicians, analysts, and experts on Russia summing up the year 2009 in the North Caucasus. After an assessment of these statements, it is increasingly obvious that the situation in the region... MORE

On January 4, the operational headquarters in Chechnya announced that the zone of the counter-terrorist operation in the Achkhoi-Martan and Urus-Martan districts, in the republic’s southwestern foothills, had been expanded. Law enforcement officials were quoted saying that they had additional information about possible terrorist suspects... MORE

On December 28, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev proposed changing the federal law regarding the numbers of seats in regional parliaments throughout the Russian Federation. The new legislation is designed to establish rules governing the number of seats in regional parliaments, which stipulate a minimum and... MORE

On January 12, a major gas pipeline was blown up with an explosive device in southern Dagestan. The pipeline stretching from Mozdok in North Ossetia to Kazimagomed in Dagestan connects Russian gas pipelines to the Azeri gas pipeline network. Eleven settlements, including the city of... MORE

Violence continues unabated in the North Caucasus in the second week of January, with apparent insurgency-related incidents reported in Ingushetia, Dagestan, Chechnya and Kabardino-Balkaria. Unidentified attackers fired automatic weapons at the home of a businessman and his family in Nazran, Ingushetia, early today (January 14).... MORE

The year ended unexpectedly for Dagestan’s Sharia Jamaat. Completely by accident, a group of Khasavyurt city policemen encountered a car that disregarded their demands to stop. As a result of the ensuing gun battle, all four occupants of the vehicle were killed (Interfax, December 31).... MORE