When the world was asking just over a decade ago “Who is Mr. Putin?” Mintimir Shaimiev, Tatarstan’s president at that time, said that “[Vladimir] Putin wants to do things in Russia just as they are done in Tatarstan” (Zvezda Povolszhya, March 2). By this he... MORE

According to Maria Kravchenko, a member of the Russian human rights center “Sova,” Russian authorities continue to persecute the followers of Said Nursi, a Turkish theologian who died in 1960. Kravchenko notes that Nursi’s followers are often sentenced to 1.5 years in prison (Kavkaz-uzel.ru, November... MORE

Russian media have reported that Moscow’s envoy to the North Caucasus, Alexander Khloponin, is expected to become head of the board of directors of the Northern Caucasus Resorts Company by the end of May. Khloponin, thereby, will have the combined power of a deputy prime... MORE

Entering the second year of his third presidency, President Vladimir Putin has shown uncharacteristically scant interest to foreign policy matters perhaps suspecting that Western “partners” are sponsoring Russia’s opposition movement and that neighboring post-Soviet leaders and even Chinese “friends” are losing confidence in his leadership.... MORE

One month ago (February 14), Kyiv’s Pechersky District Court launched investigatory proceedings into the 1996 murder of then Ukraine’s wealthiest oligarch, Yevhen Shcherban. Yet, as investigative journalist Tetyana Chornovil has pointed out, the murder of Shcherban cannot be separated from political-economic-criminal conditions in Donetsk from... MORE

On March 2, Federal Security Service (FSB) personnel in St. Petersburg arrested members of the Nurjular organization, which in 2008 was designated as an extremist group by the Russian Supreme Court and outlawed (https://ru.apa.az/news/242585). Five citizens of Russia, four citizens of Azerbaijan and one citizen... MORE

Georgia’s parliamentary elections on October 1, 2012, have ushered in, not merely a rotation of government, but a change of regime, from President Mikheil Saakashvili’s United National Movement (UNM) to billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream. The latter won an indisputable mandate in the narrow terms... MORE

The political crisis in Bulgaria is deepening as the street protests continue despite the surprising resignation of the government on February 20. The wave of protests has spread to over 25 cities; in Sofia the demonstrators have set up a tent camp in front of... MORE

The massive relocation of North Caucasians to Europe is still under way, producing concerns among both the regional authorities in the North Caucasus and Western European countries. While in 2000, at the beginning of the second Chechen war, only ethnic Chechens were found among the... MORE

Multiple, if inconclusive, signs suggest that the Western policy of punitive sanctions against Belarus has once again reached a dead end and may soon be reconsidered. Uta Zapf, a member of the German Bundestag, who is about to step down from her chairmanship of the... MORE