The Azerbaijani leadership is showing its impatience at the continuing diplomatic deadlock over the disputed province of Karabakh. The signals coming out of Baku indicate that the Aliev administration is prepared -- at least in words -- to try to resolve the long-running conflict with... MORE

The hostilities continue in Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia. This week the Georgian and Ossetian sides are accusing each other of firing at villages in the conflict zone. On August 12, beginning 5:30 a.m., Ossetian separatists were shelling ethnic-Georgian-populated villages and moving their heavy... MORE

Dagestan is threatening to spin out of control. That, at least, is the claim of a pair of reports -- one in a Russian newspaper and the other on a Chechen separatist website. Nezavisimaya gazeta reported on August 10 that the mayor of the city... MORE

The Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed on August 10 that unnamed "foreign sponsors" have supplied Chechen separatists with funds to disrupt Chechnya's presidential election, scheduled for August 29. Sergei Ignatchenko, head of the FSB's public relations center, said the funds were specifically earmarked for increased... MORE

The latest escalation in Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia re-ignited a heated policy debate in Moscow on what should be the Kremlin's stance in the conflict. Significantly, Russia's policies vis-a-vis Tbilisi and the renegade authorities of South Ossetia are being sharply criticized by both... MORE

The preparations for the October 3 presidential elections in Georgia's breakaway Abkhazia region are gaining momentum and presenting political surprises. Sergei Shamba, the former foreign minister, has kept his promise to stay in politics after his party, United Abkhazia, refused to nominate him as a... MORE

Martial law was unofficially declared in Karachaevo-Cherkessia early in August. According to Regnum News Agency, the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) is bringing additional troops into the Republic from Rostov, Krasnodar, Stavropol, Moscow, and other regions of Russia. The piedmont area of Karachaevo-Cherkessia is isolated... MORE

For the first time in more than a decade, Georgia is now mustering the will to uphold the principle of the inviolability of recognized borders under international law. Moscow's policy has largely succeeded in obliterating the Russia-Georgia border in the Abkhaz and South Ossetian sectors,... MORE

On July 31, a Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry statement approvingly confirmed that a Russian company has begun maintenance work on the Sochi (Russia)-Sukhumi (Abkhazia) railroad. That railroad is legally Georgian, but is controlled by Russia and the Abkhaz. The Russian move violates the March 2003... MORE

The head of Dagestan's Novolak district administration, Arsen Khaidakov, was assassinated in Makhachkala on the evening of July 29. His death is the latest in a decade of political violence that has claimed many Dagestani officials and politicians. Khaidakov, 39, was shot on the doorsteps... MORE