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

As expected, Doku Umarov, the leader of the North Caucasus rebels, was not found among those killed near the village of Upper Alkun in the mountainous part of Ingushetia bordering Chechnya during a March 28 major military-police operation employing military aircraft (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/153198). Nonetheless, the armed... MORE

Insurgency-related violence was reported across the North Caucasus this past week. On April 14, three suspected militants were detained in Kabardino-Balkaria after police stopped a car in which four people were traveling along the Kavkaz federal highway between the villages of Chegem and Shalushka. The... MORE

On March 22, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church decreed redrawing the eparchial boundaries in the North Caucasus. Since the Russian Orthodox Church has been known for close cooperation with the Russian state over the past decade, the move attracted substantial attention from... MORE

On April 5, a statement made by a group of Circassians to the embattled head of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi, spread in the Internet. An Israeli specialist on the Circassians, Avraham Shmulevich republished the highly unusual statement offering Circassian assistance to Gaddafi on his blog. The... MORE

Violence continued in parts of the North Caucasus - particularly in Dagestan – this past week despite the major blow dealt to the North Caucasus rebels by a counter-insurgency operation in which 17 militants were killed. There were reports that Doku Umarov, the Chechen rebel... MORE