The first week of April saw the revival of heated debates about the fate of the Radiolocation Station (RLS) located in the Azerbaijani city of Gabala (100 miles to the west of Baku). Azerbaijan leased the Gabala RLS to Russia for a 10-year period starting... MORE

No one could have predicted a scandal would erupt when, on April 3, the Russian National Anti-Terrorist Committee (NAK) reported that security forces had killed five rebels in Ingushetia’s main city, Nazran. The authorities acknowledged there was a woman among the slain rebels. According to... MORE

Moscow has again proposed formal multilateral cooperation with NATO. On April 6, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov arrived in Astana to attend the council of foreign ministers of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), ahead of the CSTO summit in Moscow on May 15. Lavrov... MORE

On April 6, the president of Dagestan, Magomedsalam Magomedov, met with Russian Deputy Interior Minister Sergei Gerasimov in Makhachkala. The chief police official of the North Caucasus Federal District, Sergei Chenchik, and the chief of the Russian Interior Ministry’s police aviation and special units, Vladimir... MORE

Suspected militants have attacked police in Kabardino-Balkaria and Ingushetia, with the latter republic experiencing a recent uptick in insurgency-related violence.In Kabardino-Balkaria today (April 6), two suspected rebels who attacked a police officer were killed in a special operation in Nalchik. According to local authorities, the... MORE

Turkish-Syrian relations have been always problematic. Dating back to the Cold War, Syria’s support for the Kurdish militants of the Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan (PKK) was a major obstacle to efforts to normalize relations between the two countries until the 1998 Adana Accord allowed Syria and... MORE

March appeared to be a fairly successful month for the Russian security services that carried out counterterrorism operations in Kabardino-Balkaria. On March 29, Kabardino-Balkaria’s parliament, along with republican Interior Minister Sergei Vasiliev, appealed to Moscow’s envoy to the North Caucasus Federal District, Aleksandr Khloponin, asking... MORE

Russian Defense Ministry sources told the semiofficial news agency Interfax that action plans are being finalized to react to an armed conflict involving Iran and its nuclear program. The General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces “calculates” that military action against Iran will commence “in... MORE

On March 30, an estimated 50 relatives of the murdered member of Karachaevo-Cherkessian parliament, Islam Krymshamkhalov, staged a protest near the office of Moscow’s envoy to the North Caucasus, Aleksandr Khloponin, in Pyatigorsk. Krymshamkhalov was killed near the Karachaevo-Cherkessian Supreme Court in Cherkessk in January... MORE

Kyrgyzstan has agreed to retain the US Transit Center at the Manas airport beyond the term of current contract that expires in 2014. At a meeting with James Mattis, commander of US Central Command (CENTCOM) on April 2, Kyrgyzstan’s Defense Council Secretary Busurmankul Tabaldiyev lauded... MORE