Latest North Caucasus Weekly Articles
Violence Haunts a New Year in Ingushetia and Dagestan
The start of the New Year has seen little abatement of violence in Ingushetia. On January 7, an improvised explosive device went off in a garage near an apartment building in the city of Karabulak, killing two people. A federal military source told Interfax that... MORE
Chechens Protest Parole for Budanov
Some 2,000, people rallied in Chechnya on December 29 to protest the granting of parole to Yuri Budanov, the Russian colonel who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the murder of an 18-year-old Chechen woman, Elza Kungaeva. According to the Associated Press, protesters... MORE
Website: Few Improvements in the North Caucasus in 2008
In a review of last year’s events in the North Caucasus, Kavkazky Uzel wrote on January 7 that 2008 saw neither “stabilization” nor a successful conclusion to “the war on separatism,” the “uprooting of extremism,” or an end to the problem of kidnapping. “This was... MORE
New Tensions Surface in Ossetian-Ingush Relations
Two factors, a controversial federal law that carves in stone disputed administrative borders between North Ossetia and Ingushetia and an outbreak of violence, are reigniting tensions between the two neighboring North Caucasus republics.At the end of November, President Dmitry Medvedev signed a federal law establishing... MORE
Chechen Interior Minister Tries to Play Down the Insurgency
At a meeting with the heads of the combat detachments of Chechnya’s district and municipal internal affairs departments on December 5, Chechnya’s interior minister, Police Lieutenant General Ruslan Alkhanov, said that in the past month alone 10 members of the illegal armed formation were killed... MORE
Spain Agrees to Extradite Former Rebel Commander
Spain on December 13 agreed to extradite a Chechen wanted on terrorism charges, Murad Gasayev, to Russia in connection with the June 2004 attack on government buildings in Ingushetia. According to the Associated Press, Gasayev was arrested by police in an apartment in the eastern... MORE
New Ingush Rights Council Flooded with Complaints
Interfax reported on December 12 that the new Human Rights Council set up by Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov had received complaints from over 150 people during its first few days of operation. The council’s chairman, Azamat Nalgiyev, told the news agency that most of the... MORE
Rights Activists: Religious Repression Feeds Dagestan’s Insurgency
At a human rights conference held in Moscow on December 10—which was International Human Rights day, marking the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Day—Lev Ponomaryev, the veteran activist who leads the For Human Rights movement, called for holding public hearings on... MORE
Militant Actions Shake Up Dagestan
The frequency of militant actions carried out by the members of the Sharia Jamaat in Dagestan increased drastically in late November and early December. Practically not a day goes by without news reports about armed assaults on police forces in the capital of Makhachkala and... MORE