Bidzina Ivanishvili, the billionaire seeking political power in Georgia, is recruiting political allies to his proprietary Georgian Dream movement, ahead of parliamentary elections. A newcomer to politics, Ivanishvili started out by dismissing all of the numerous factions in the extra-parliamentary opposition as useless (he admitted... MORE

Georgian billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili has appointed his wife, Ekaterine Khvedelidze, as leader of his Georgian Dream movement. Its legal status is that of a “public,” i.e. a non-political organization. However, Georgian Dream pursues the declared goals of turning into a political party, winning the 2012... MORE

On January 23, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin published an article about ethnic relations in the Russian Federation. This was Putin’s second article to appear in the Russian press recently as he gears up for presidential elections in the country in March 2012. To a... MORE

In Dagestan today (January 20), three alleged militants were killed in a shootout with security forces in the republic’s Khasavyurt district. According to the Anti-Terrorist Committee, two of the slain suspects were identified as 25-year-old twin brothers Sabit and Said Akaev, who, according to the... MORE

The Kavkazsky Uzel (Caucasian Knot) website has published the statistics for casualties in the North Caucasus in 2011. The figures, compiled using open sources, allow us to draw a range of interesting conclusions. First of all, it is peculiar that the number of those wounded... MORE

On January 16, in what may constitute a major political shift, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev introduced a bill reintroducing the direct election of governors in the regions of the Russian Federation. The newspaper Kommersant published photocopies of the president’s legislative proposal on its website. The... MORE

Senior US officials have sounded remarkably optimistic about the conduct of Armenia’s forthcoming parliamentary elections, which President Serzh Sargsyan will try to use as a launch pad for winning a second term in office in 2013. Highlighting Washington’s overall satisfaction with the current authorities in... MORE

In an interview published on December 27, 2011, the chairman of the Circassian organization Khase, Ibragim Yaganov, scathingly criticized the Russian government for its policies in Kabardino-Balkaria. Yaganov, who is based in Kabardino-Balkaria, is a well-known public figure among Circassians. In an interview with the... MORE

In Dagestan, two policemen were wounded today (January 13) when a police road patrol unit was attacked in the town of Izerbash. A Dagestani law-enforcement source reported that the incident took place shortly after midnight when gunmen driving in a car opened fire on the... MORE

In accordance with a tradition that has been in place since 2005, Ramzan Kadyrov rang in 2012 with his estimate of the number of insurgents in Chechnya. Citing numerous operational sources, he stated that there are only 50 or fewer militants left in the republic.... MORE