On March 31, Prosecutor General Archil Kbilashvili threatened to summon Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili for questioning in at least three parallel criminal investigations. One of these would focus on the president’s responsibility for the 2008 war with Russia.Separately, on April 1, Public Defender (Ombudsman) Ucha... MORE

On March 17, the Iranian navy launched a new Jamaran-2 destroyer in the Caspian Sea. The Iranian establishment, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi and Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces Hassan Firuzabadi, attended the ceremony. This destroyer was developed and... MORE

At the end of March, Mukhamed Cherkesov, the leader of the Circassian organization in Karachaevo-Cherkessia, addressed a plea to republican officials to help Circassian refugees from Syria. Cherkesov alleged that Syrian Circassians have been encountering unusually steep bureaucratic hurdles in Karachaevo-Cherkessia and been forced to... MORE

Over the past several months, various sources have raised the issue of Chechen involvement in the armed uprising in Syria. Few doubt that Chechens have been present in the conflict-ridden country. The question is how central their position is in the anti-Assad armed opposition.First of... MORE

On March 25, Georgia’s parliament voted in favor of constitutional amendments that significantly reduce the president’s powers to influence domestic and foreign policy (https://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=25887). According to the amendments, the president will have no right to dismiss the government without parliament’s consent. Currently, the Georgian Dream... MORE

The gas producers’ consortium at Shah Deniz in Azerbaijan is holding parallel negotiations with the pipeline project companies, Nabucco and Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), to select one of these routes to Europe. March 31 is the deadline for submission of Nabucco-West’s and TAP’s competing offers to... MORE

On March 20, the newspaper Kommersant reported that Tatarstan has prepared a series of amendments to the Russian law on fighting extremism. The adoption of this legislation would increase the penalties for individuals involved in extremist organizations. Experts warn that the new laws could render... MORE

According to a Moscow sociologist, ethnic Russians are “paradoxically” more likely to suffer from discrimination in those republics of the North Caucasus where there are more of them. This finding suggests that ongoing efforts by the Kremlin and some republican leaders to promote the return... MORE

Among the roles of Gazprom’s South Stream pipeline project was that of aborting the EU-backed Nabucco, merely by threatening to preempt Nabucco’s markets along the same route downstream. Conversely, Nabucco’s European rival Trans-Adriatic Pipeline project (TAP) can abort Nabucco by preempting the gas supply source... MORE

On March 22 in Copenhagen, the Danish and Turkish prime ministers, Helle Thorning-Schmidt and Recep Tayyp Erdogan, witnessed the signing of agreements between subsidiaries of Danish Moeller-Maersk and Azerbaijan’s State Oil Company (SOCAR) to develop a giant port near Izmir in Turkey. The petrochemicals holding... MORE