Georgia’s 2008 Law on Occupied Territories explicitly bans all domestic and foreign companies from conducting any type of economic (commercial or non-commercial) activities in the Russian-occupied territories of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali region (South Ossetia). Exceptions can be made in certain circumstances but only with the... MORE

While the governor of Dagestan, Ramazan Abdulatipov, has boasted of a drastic reduction in the number of attacks by insurgents in the republic, the Russian authorities’ statistics indicate that attacks in Dagestan are, in fact, increasing. At a recent meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin,... MORE

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s visit to Baku, on September 1, followed just a few days later by Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan’s official visit to Moscow, have fueled ongoing speculation that Russia is conducting parallel consultations on the Karabakh conflict resolution process (see EDM, August... MORE

On September 10, Maksim Shevchenko, a member of the Council for Human Rights under the President of the Russian Federation, unexpectedly announced that the Council would ask President Vladimir Putin to allow the repatriation of Circassian Syrians to the North Caucasus. In an interview with... MORE

Dagestan is the largest republic of the North Caucasus and, at the same time, the region’s most unstable because of the frequent attacks by the armed Islamic opposition movement. The majority of armed militants in the republic currently operate under the flag of the radical... MORE

August was a turbulent month for the armed Islamic resistance movement in the North Caucasus, with the Russian security services carrying out multiple successful operations. According to an independent news source, the Kavkazsky Uzel website, over three dozen people may have been killed or wounded... MORE

Many of Dagestan’s ethnic groups have repeatedly voiced concerns over living together in a republic in which each group feels “cheated” by the others. Few regions of the republic however, have as much of a chance to successfully secede as southern Dagestan, popularly known by... MORE

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili presented his government’s newly appointed minister of foreign affairs, Giorgi Kvirikashvili, at the annual gathering of Georgian diplomats, in Tbilisi. Until September 1, Kvirikashvili headed the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development (Civil Georgia, September 1). The appointment evoked a... MORE

On August 22, Russian Deputy Defense Minister General Dmitry Bulgakov stated that as of the end of July, Russia had deployed 500 railway troops to restore the portion of the north-south Abkhazian railway that became non-operational since the 1992–1993 war in Abkhazia. General Bulgakov specifically... MORE

Brutal police operations in Kabardino-Balkaria in recent months have prompted some experts to conclude that the republic’s governor is building a “police republic.” Yuri Kokov has ruled Kabardino-Balkaria since December 2013, although he was officially appointed governor in October 2014. A career police official, Kokov... MORE