Security forces in Dagestan launched a special operation in the village of Novosasitli in the republic’s Khasavyurt district on March 7. According to eyewitnesses, about ten military vehicles, including trucks and armored personnel carriers, entered the village and blocked all roads leading in and out... MORE

The North Caucasus is the only part of Russia where the authorities engage in systematic abductions – a practice that has existed since the first war in Chechnya in the mid-1990s. According to the Center for Civil Assistance to the Search for Missing Persons in... MORE

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin won the March 4 presidential elections in Russia, as most observers had been expecting. Despite his landslide victory with nearly 64 percent of vote, many analysts agree that Putin will no longer be able to treat the presidency as a sinecure... MORE

A police colonel was assassinated today (March 2) in Dagestan’s capital Makhachkala. The victim, identified as 51-year-old Magomed Musaev, the deputy head of the criminal investigation department in Makhachkala’s Sovietsky district, was shot by unidentified attackers as he drove to work. According to initial reports,... MORE

The death of yet another Dagestani rebel leader this month passed unnoticed against the backdrop of bloody fighting in the border area between Chechnya and Dagestan last week. Like the killings of previous Dagestani insurgent leaders, the latest killing will have little impact on the... MORE

On February 27, Russian state television’s Channel One announced that the Russian and Ukrainian security services had thwarted a plot to assassinate Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The attack allegedly was supposed to take place soon after the March 4 Russian presidential election. Members of the... MORE

Tensions between Dagestan’s law enforcement bodies and residents of the village of Gimry in the republic’s Untsulkysky district flared up on February 21. A large group of Gimry residents blocked the Makhachkala-Botlikh highway to protest the kidnapping of a 40-year-old fellow villager, Magomed Gamzatov. The... MORE

The start of the large-scale special operation by the police, military and Federal Security Service (FSB) forces launched in Chechnya’s Nozhai-Yurt district on February 13 sent the Russian news agencies into disarray. They reported there were three groups of militants headed by 26-year-old Arslan Mamedov... MORE

On February 18, the first North Caucasus forum of human rights organizations took place in Ingushetia. About 100 participants from other regions of the North Caucasus and Russia took part. In one of the most revealing statements to date, the head of Ingushetia, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov,... MORE

Interfax reported today (February 17) that five policemen were killed and six wounded yesterday during two shootouts with militants in Dagestan’s Kazbekovsky district along the republic’s administrative border with Chechnya. A law-enforcement source told the news agency that the Russian special operation in the area... MORE