Russian analysts are beginning to wonder whether Moscow has grown tired of Chechnya’s ruler, Ramzan Kadyrov, and wants to replace him. Recent attacks on human rights activists in Chechnya received unusually wide and negative media coverage in Russia, even though years of routine rights violations... MORE

Most analysts concerned with the Circassian issue in the North Caucasus have focused on the three republics where subgroups of that nation are the titular nationalities—Adygea, Karachaevo-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria—or on the enormous diasporas in Turkey, Jordan and elsewhere. But another player has emerged in the... MORE

Public figures rarely speak out against the existing political order in Karachaevo-Cherkessia, so the open letter from Nikolai Khokhlachyov, an ethnic-Russian activist in the republic, to Sergei Ivanov, the head of President Vladimir Putin’s administration, was surprising. Khokhlachyov called on Ivanov to appoint an ethnic... MORE

The story of Moscow State University (MGU) student Varvara Karaulova has caused an outcry in Russia. Earlier this month, to the surprise of her parents and friends, the student unexpectedly disappeared and was later found by Turkish border guards at the Syrian border (RIA Novosti,... MORE

Muslims in the North Caucasus anxiously watched the incident at a mosque in Ingushetia’s Nasyr-Kort (Nazran) municipality on June 5, when several thousand supporters of the republican mufti, Isa Khamkhoev, and the imam of the mosque, Khamzat Chumakov (see EDM, August 1, 2013), clashed with... MORE

On May 29, the well-known Cossack ataman Yuri Churekov was arrested in Stavropol region. Investigators suspect Churekov of illegal arms operations. Reportedly, on April 28, Churekov and another individual sold two Kalashnikov automatic rifles to undercover government agents in the city of Goryachevodsk, Churekov’s hometown.... MORE

On June 4, the press service of the Riigikogu (Parliament of Estonia) announced that a group of members of the Estonian legislature met Circassian activists Iyad Youghar (United States), Adel Bashqawi (Jordan) and Dr. Nusret Baş (Turkey). The main issue on the meeting’s agenda was... MORE

After Nadir Abu Khalid (a.k.a. Nadir Medetov), one of the best known radical Salafist preachers in Dagestan and one of the most popular among young people, fled to Syria, it appears that the Dagestani authorities have begun cracking down on Salafist imams. Khalid’s house arrest... MORE

The amir (commander) of the Khasavyurt jamaat, Islam Abu Ibragim (a.k.a. Islam Muradov), recently declared that Muslims in Dagestan should pay a tax to the Islamic State (IS). Ibragim is among those militants who left the Caucasus Emirate and pledged allegiance to IS leader Abu... MORE

Researchers have compared the North Caucasus and the Balkans as regions with similar historical and political trajectories (see for example Janusz Bugajski, Conflict Zones: North Caucasus and Western Balkans Compared, The Jamestown Foundation, 2014). This view has also gained traction among Russian experts. With the... MORE