As fighting for the northern Syrian town of Kobane raged in early October, videos of Islamic State militants speaking the Azerbaijani language began appearing on YouTube (RFE/RL, October 14). These video clips were followed by reports about Azerbaijani nationals found among dead Islamic State fighters... MORE

Rarely a week passes in Dagestan without the authorities launching a new special operation against militants. Some weeks, several special operations take place across the republic. In most instances, these law enforcement actions are based upon information received from Russian moles planted in the ranks... MORE

On November 18, Russian and regional analysts in Karachaevo-Cherkessia discussed the striking difference between two neighboring and quite similar republics, Karachaevo-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria. While Kabardino-Balkaria has seen the rise of a militant insurgency in recent years, Karachaevo-Cherkessia has managed to remain fairly quiet, even though... MORE

On November 20, Russian-occupied South Ossetia’s (Tskhinvali region) separatist regime declared that it is negotiating a new “comprehensive agreement on integration” with Russia, which will raise the relationship between the two sides to a “qualitatively new level,” especially in the military sphere (regnum.ru, November 20).... MORE

As he has done for years, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov was the first to announce the latest government operation against rebel militants in Chechnya. Kadyrov stated on his personal Instagram webpage that government forces had killed a group of four bandits in the republic’s Sunzha... MORE

The tradition of North Caucasus mountaineers serving in the Russian army goes back 150 years. In the 1870s, the Russian Empire tried to tie the mountaineers to the Russian system of governance by forming ethnic-based volunteer battalions. North Caucasus battalions fought in Russian wars for... MORE

As Russia’s economic stagnation reverberates in the North Caucasus, the regional elites have begun to scramble for local resources. An uncharacteristically open discussion erupted in Dagestan’s republican parliament in Makhachkala on October 30, when a well-known politician in the republic, Eduard Khidirov, stated that between... MORE

As of several weeks ago, the station Radio-Sputnik has begun broadcasting in Georgia from its studio located on Ateni Street in downtown Tbilisi. It prepares radio programs for the agency News Georgia, which, in turn, is a partner of the Russian media giant Rossiya Segodnya... MORE

Despite Western economic sanctions, Iranian-Turkish relations have been developing in many different directions in recent years. Illustratively, on October 24–25, the Eastern Anatolia Development Agency (DAKA), Iran’s Foreign Ministry Institution for Political and International Studies (IPIS) and the Turkish Asian Center for Strategic Studies (TASAM)... MORE

After the recent death of another leader of Dagestan’s Aukhov jamaat, the press service of the Dagestani Liberation Front posted a video recording of the address of the emir of the Northern Sector, Islam Abu Ibragim (a. k. a. Islam Ibragimov). The leader of Dagestan’s... MORE