Last week (May 1), Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili submitted his new cabinet appointments for approval by the parliament. The pro-Western Republican Party, which is part of the ruling Georgian Dream coalition, made substantial gains in the new cabinet. One of the leaders of the... MORE

Authorities in Kabardino-Balkaria have launched a campaign to give the Ubykhs, a Circassian sub-ethnic group, official small indigenous group status. That special status would allow the Ubykhs to claim many benefits from the Russian government, including property rights in Russia’s Krasnodar region, the homeland the... MORE

China has found an unlikely ally in the North Caucasus—the region’s smallest republic, Ingushetia. The Ingushetian government has announced that a large Russian-Chinese forum will take place in the republic and contracts worth millions of dollars will be signed. The republic’s government has agreed to... MORE

After Ramzan Kadyrov’s statements authorizing Chechen police to shoot to kill police officers from outside Chechnya who appear there without notifying the republican authorities (see EDM, April 27), the governor of Dagestan, Ramazan Abdulatipov, came out in support of his colleague, saying that special operations... MORE

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has become one of Russia’s most quoted persons for the second time since last December. After the incursion into Grozny by a small group of militants on December 4, 2014, Kadyrov ordered the burning down of the militants’ houses and the... MORE

The Russian government is considering building a new water link connecting the Caspian Sea to the ocean via the Azov and Black seas. The new route is supposed to be the shortest and the cheapest way to carry Chinese goods via Central Asia to Europe.... MORE

On April 22–24, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka paid his first ever official visit to Georgia. The visit was filled with pageantry and emotional declarations, as President Lukashenka met with Georgian President Giorgi Margevlashvili, Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili, and the head of the Georgian Orthodox Church,... MORE

The ruler of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, is embroiled in a dispute with the Russian Ministry of Interior. On April 19, law enforcement agents conducting a special operation in Grozny shot and killed a suspect after he reportedly tried to ram a police car and opened... MORE

Abkhazia, a former autonomous region of Georgia, was recognized as an “independent state” by Russia following the five-day Russian-Georgian war in August 2008. A couple weeks ago (April 10), the “prime minister” of Abkhazia, Artur Mikvabia, officially presented the self-proclaimed republic’s newest deputy prime minister,... MORE

Observers who have followed the evolution of Russia’s campaign against the Islamic armed resistance in the North Caucasus over the past 16 years probably noticed that Moscow has no strategy in the region, but only a set of chaotic reactions. Apart from special operations, the... MORE