Since the Bucharest summit of April 2008, when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) pledged that Georgia (and Ukraine) “will become members of NATO” (Summitbucharest.ro, April 3, 2008), the South Caucasus country has achieved a number of important milestones on its path to closer integration... MORE

With the start of a new year, the situation involving the militarized Islamic jamaat of Kabarda, Balkaria and Karachai (KBK), which operates in two North Caucasian republics, Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachaevo-Cherkessia, remains unclear. When Caucasus Emirate (CE) militants started to switch allegiance to the Islamic State... MORE

Russia’s Muslims are slowly realizing that they have a voice in the country’s foreign policy in the Middle East. President Vladimir Putin unexpectedly launched a military campaign in Syria in the fall of 2015, apparently giving little consideration to Russia’s Muslim population. Indeed, Moscow threw... MORE

At the end of December, President Vladimir Putin unexpectedly ordered his cabinet to transfer the ownership of a large oil and gas company in Chechnya, Chechenneftekhimprom, from federal control to that of the Chechen government. According to the newspaper Kommersant, Chechnya’s head, Ramzan Kadyrov, made... MORE

In 2015, Russia changed its assessment of threats, shifting its focus from the Caucasus Emirate to members of the so-called Islamic State (IS). The Russian government’s concern is not so much about the numbers of people who went to Syria and may return, but rather... MORE

On December 23, Irakli Garibashvili resigned from his post as prime minister of Georgia (Channel 1 TV, Rustavi 2 TV, Imedi TV, December 23, 2015). The decision came as a surprise to Georgian society since, just two days earlier, Prime Minister Garibashvili boasted that his... MORE

Events in the North Caucasus in 2015 showed that the insurgency in the region continued to decline—a trend first noted in 2011. No official figures on insurgent violence are yet available, but they are likely to be about 50 percent lower than in 2014. For... MORE

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

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

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