Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev visited Turkey on November 5 and 6 as his first official trip abroad since reelection, underscoring the two countries’ special relationship. While traditional, that relationship has evolved substantially during Ilham Aliyev’s presidency and is no longer asymmetrical. As he remarked during... MORE

The position of top commander in Dagestan’s Sharia Jamaat has been vacant for a month now since the death of its former leader Abdul-Majjid on September 8th near the Dagestan-Azeri border during a joint Russo-Azeri special forces operation that lasted over 10 days (www.azeri.ru/papers/echo-az_info/26465). Commenting... MORE

Special Forces Members Targeted in ChechnyaPrague Watchdog reported on November 3 that a checkpoint on the road between Gudermes and Shuani manned by a company from the Vostok special battalion came under fire from unidentified gunmen traveling in a Zhiguli car on November 1. According... MORE

Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, who made an official visit to Moscow this past weekend, met in the Russian capital with Ramzan Kadyrov and accepted an invitation from the Chechen president to visit Chechnya in 2010, RIA Novosti reported. “President Ramzan Kadyrov invited the Libyan leader... MORE

In an article published in Gazeta on November 1, Sanobar Shermatova quoted an anonymous official who knows Yunus-Bek Yevkurov as saying that the colonel was appointed president of Ingushetia with the specific task of introducing order in the republic. The official also said that Ingushetia’s... MORE

Ingushetia’s parliament on October 31 confirmed Yunus-Bek Yevkurov as the republic’s president, replacing Murat Zyazikov, who resigned the previous day (North Caucasus Weekly, October 31). According to Itar-Tass, 16 legislators out of the 18 who attended the session voted to confirm the 45-year-old colonel, while... MORE

Effective from November 1, Chevron’s subsidiary TengizChevroil is significantly augmenting oil shipments from Kazakhstan, via Azerbaijan and Georgia, to international markets. This development adds to the evidence that business confidence is returning to the Azerbaijan-Georgia transit corridor, in the aftermath of the Russia-Georgia war. The... MORE

Presidents Dmitry Medvedev of Russia, Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, and Serge Sarkisian of Armenia met on November 2 near Moscow to discuss the current state of negotiations on the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. With those negotiations moving slowly forward at several levels and on their own momentum,... MORE

Last August the long-frozen conflict between Georgia and Russia suddenly defrosted, erupting in a bitter, five-day military clash. Now a sudden rise in defense spending by Azerbaijan may be a seismic precursor to a possible thawing of a second unresolved Caucasian conflict, the standoff between... MORE