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Latest Articles about The Caucasus
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Armenia, Georgia, Iran and Russia Plan to Expand Energy Cooperation
In Yerevan, on December 23, the energy ministers of Armenia, Georgia, and Iran as well as the chief executive of the Rosseti joint-stock company, which manages Russia’s power distribution grids, signed a memorandum on cooperation in the energy sphere. According to the Armenian Ministry of... MORE
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Attack in Dagestan Undermines Claims That Republic Is Stable
On December 29, unidentified individuals carried out an attack at the Naryn-Kala fortress, a well-known tourist site in Derbent, Dagestan, killing a Russian border guard officer and injuring 11 other people (Lifenews.ru, December 30, 2015). The slain border guard officer was identified as Semyon Sporyshev.... MORE
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Office of Largest Opposition Party in Georgia Comes Under Attack
On the night of December 9, unidentified assailants attacked an office of the most influential opposition party of Georgia, United National Movement (UNM), in the town of Dedoplistskaro, near the capital of Tbilisi (Civil Georgia, December 10). Former Georgian president (2008–2013) and the current governor... MORE
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Young Islamic Radicals Carry out Arson Attacks on Sufi Tombs in Chechnya
Chechnya’s two-century-old Sufi tradition experienced its first crisis 30 years ago, when the first Salafists appeared in the republic. The Salafists did not simply proclaim the supremacy of their teachings, but aspired to take power in the republic. The Salafist aim of grabbing power sparked... MORE
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Growing Number of Russian Converts to Islam Joining Insurgents at Home and Abroad
With 28-year-old Anatoly Zemlyanka’s notorious killing of 23-year-old member Magomed Khasiev, ethnic-Russian Muslims are again in the spotlight. Khasiev (a. k. a. Yevgeny Yudin), an ethnic-Russian convert to Islam, came from the Ural region in Russia, while Zemlyanka came from the Siberian town of Noyabrsk.... MORE
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Moscow’s Insistence on Micro-Managing Dagestan Is Destabilizing the Republic
Moscow’s Insistence on Micro-Managing Dagestan Is Destabilizing the Republic Dagestani experts are sounding the alarm about a rise in ethnic tensions in the republic. Some analysts see Dagestan’s current governor, Ramazan Abdulatipov, as the culprit in the rising tensions because the republic’s Avar majority is... MORE
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Armenia Facing Demographic Collapse
“ ‘All progressive humanity’ is concerned by the periodic reports about the disappearance of this or that type of plant or animal, [but] we are much less concerned about the disappearance of nations and nationalities,” Armenian expert Gevork Pogosyan says. Yet, as the post-Soviet period... MORE
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Russian Sanctions Against Turkey Show That Circassians Are Among Russia’s Priority Targets
Russia-Turkey relations appear to be deteriorating further after last month’s downing of a Russian warplane on the border between Turkey and Syria. At a meeting with Russian defense ministry officials on December 11, President Vladimir Putin warned against “provocations” against the Russian military in Syria... MORE
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Russia Expands Military Presence in Armenia, Deepens Confrontational Rhetoric
The November 24 downing of the Russian Su-24 bomber by the Turkish air force has resulted in a serious deterioration in bilateral relations and the deployment of additional Russian units to Syria (see EDM, November 30, December 3), as well as an upsurge in anti-Turkish... MORE
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Estimates of the Number of Dagestanis Fighting in Syria Range from 600 to 5,000
Recent reports suggest that the number of foreign recruits to the Islamic State (IS) has increased two-fold over the past year and a half (Gazeta.ru, December 8). At the same time, based on open sources, a group of researchers have found that the flow of... MORE