Turkey’s prospective participation in a six-day NATO exercise in Armenia in September, and the informal Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) meeting in Astana, reignited the debate on the stalled Turkish-Armenian normalization process. The Armenia 2010 exercise will focus on post-earthquake civil emergency... MORE

On July 15, Moskovsky Komsomolets published a revealing report about a bitter conflict between the Russian interior ministry troops stationed in Chechnya and the Chechen Sever (“North”) battalion. Russian interior ministry sources told the newspaper that on February 4, 2010 during an operation against a... MORE

Attacks reported in Kabardino-Balkaria, Dagestan, Ingushetia and ChechnyaDespite Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin’s, announcement of a new plan to overhaul the economy of the North Caucasus, there was little sign of a let-up in insurgency related violence in the region this week. A large improvised... MORE

Russia seems to be poised to invest big money in the North Caucasus in an effort to reduce the intensity of rebel activities there. But the target group of Russia’s new policy is not primarily the militants engaged in armed resistance against Russian rule, but... MORE

Tension between Armenia and Azerbaijan has risen significantly over the past month despite a renewed international push for a resolution to the Karabakh conflict. The US, Russia and France are again pressing the conflicting parties to finalize a framework peace accord drafted by the three... MORE

One year since Natalya Estemirova, a prominent Chechen human rights activist and renowned journalist, was kidnapped and shot, her murder remains unsolved, while Chechnya has increasingly become a no-go zone for independent journalists and human rights NGO’s. At a press conference held in Moscow on... MORE

Russia’s Gazprom has proposed to the German RWE company to join Gazprom’s South Stream pipeline project. According to German business press reports, Gazprom Vice-President, Aleksandr Medvedev, has approached senior RWE management with this proposal. RWE, however, is a stakeholder in the EU-backed Nabucco project. Gazprom’s... MORE

On July 6, Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, outlined the government’s plans for North Caucasus development at a United Russia party gathering in the Stavropol region (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, July 6). However, the grandiose future projects that Putin described in his speech were accompanied by much more... MORE

As Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, this week announced a new strategy to bring prosperity to the North Caucasus, people across the region publicly accused local authorities of abusing human rights. Putin said in the city of Kislovodsk in Stavropol Krai on July 6 that... MORE

Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, has outlined a revised and updated policy of regime change towards Georgia. Interviewed on July 8 by the Mir television channel, Lavrov raised the possibility of fomenting tensions among the Armenian and Azeri ethnic minorities inside Georgia. Lavrov urged Georgia... MORE