On April 18, against the backdrop of the ongoing territorial dispute between Chechnya and Ingushetia, about 300 law enforcement agents from the Chechen Republic entered the village of Arshty in Ingushetia’s Sunzha district. The incursion took the tensions between Ingushetia and Chechnya to a whole... MORE

The launch of a Talysh-language radio station based in the Armenian-occupied territories but directed at the members of that ethnic minority elsewhere in Azerbaijan is part of the latest chapter in the long and dangerous history of efforts by Azerbaijan’s three neighbors—Armenia, Iran and the... MORE

“Tens of thousands of people attending [this] demonstration show that rumors of our death have been exaggerated,” the former speaker of the Georgian parliament David Bakradze declared at the April 19 rally of the presidential party United National Movement (UNM), paraphrasing Mark Twain. This was... MORE

The news that the Boston terrorists are ethnic Chechens who have lived in the United States for many years may be shocking for many Americans, but in Russia it does not seem that surprising. How Tamerlan Tsarnaev had become so alienated from the country that... MORE

Surprising news emerged from Moscow this week that Ruslan Aushev plans to challenge the current head of Ingushetia, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, and run for the position of republican head. Aushev made his unexpected announcement on the Dozhd TV channel on the evening of April 16, 2013.... MORE

Lenin’s classic declaration on the 1917 revolution—“Comrades! The socialist revolution that the Bolsheviks were talking about for so long has come true!”—can be used to describe the Magnitsky Act. Yet, the much talked-about act did not turn out to be as comprehensive as expected.The Magnitsky... MORE

Last week (April 12), the United States government published, in accordance with the US Magnitsky Act adopted last December, a list of 18 Russians accused of involvement in the death in custody of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and other alleged rights abuses (https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/OFAC-Enforcement/Pages/20130412.aspx). The blacklisted... MORE

Salim Shamsiddinov, a leader of Tajikistan’s ethnic Uzbek community, went missing on March 16. According to Amnesty International, Shamsiddinov’s disappearance could have been a politically motivated abduction. In May of last year, Shamsiddinov was severely beaten by unknown attackers. That attack came after he suggested... MORE

In October 2002, President Leonid Kuchma visited Warsaw where North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary General Javier Solana told him, “Sometimes Ukraine seems to be playing with, not by, the rules” (https://www.day.kiev.ua/en/article/day-after-day/play-not-rules). A most recent case in point is the April 7 “pardon” of former... MORE

A surprising series of counter-terrorist operations in North Ossetia were launched in the spring of 2013. On March 4, a counter-terrorism operation regime was introduced in three villages—Tarskoe, Verkhny Komgaron and Nizhny Komgaron. All three are located in the southeastern part of the republic, bordering... MORE