Liz Fuller writes the Caucasus Report blog for RFE/RL.
A recent opinion poll in Nazran, home to one in four people in Ingushetia, reflects a high level of pent-up discontent.
Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Noghaideli has presented to the OSCE's Permanent Council in Vienna the most recent version of President Mikheil Saakashvili's proposals for resolving the South Ossetian conflict.
The mixture of uncertainty and rumor that imbues Azerbaijani domestic politics has always made it difficult, if not impossible to identify clearly the factions most observers believe exist within the upper echelons of the country's leadership, let alone to predict the outcome of that presumed struggle between them for influence.
Pro-Moscow Chechen Deputy Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov (file photo) Andreas Gross, a Swiss parliamentarian who has served since June 2003 as rapporteur on Chechnya for the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), expressed concern in a 19 October interview with RFE/RL's North Caucasus Service that the fighting in Chechnya has already spilled over beyond the borders of that republic to affect several neighboring regions of the North Caucasus.
In a move that an opposition faction says heralds a "return to the Russian orbit," the Georgian government has dismissed Foreign Minister Salome Zourabichvili. She has vowed to defeat forces that support Russia and neocommunism.
Radical Chechen field commander Shamil Basaev said today that he contributed to the planning of the 13 October operation in Nalchik in which 217 militants participated in multiple attacks on police, army, and Federal Security Service (FSB) facilities.
Although many details of the 13 October multiple attacks in Nalchik, capital of the Kabardino-Balkaria Republic, remain unclear, and estimates of the number of militants who participated, and of those captured or killed, diverge significantly, the militants do not appear to have scored a military victory in the classic sense of the word. While they succeeded in sowing chaos and terror, the losses they inflicted may prove to be numerically smaller than in any single large-scale action undertaken by the Chechen resistance since 1995.
A challenge to President Bagapsh's rule? (file photo) Deputies to the founding congress of the opposition Forum of People's Unity of Abkhazia (FNEA), which took place in Sukhum on 7 October, issued two statements that, taken together, could be construed as a warning or even a challenge to the Abkhaz leadership that came to power in January as a result of Sergei Bagapsh's victory in a repeat presidential election.
Police in Nalchik today Chechen resistance fighters launched simultaneous attacks in the morning of 13 October against multiple targets in Nalchik, capital of the Kabardino-Balkaria Republic (KBR), but reportedly sustained heavy losses in fighting with Russian police and security forces. ITAR-TASS quoted KBR President Arsen Kanokov as saying that 50 of the estimated 150 militants have been killed.
Dmitrii Kozak with President Putin in May Speaking at a 23 September conference attended by North Caucasus leaders, Russian President Vladimir Putin wholeheartedly endorsed proposals by his envoy to the Southern Federal District, Dmitrii Kozak, to curtail the powers of federation subject heads whose fiefdoms are heavily dependent on the federal budget to finance their budget spending. Days earlier, an article criticizing Kozak's performance during the 12 months since his appointment was published in a south Russian newspaper and immediately reprinted by several national dailies. It is not clear who sought to compromise Kozak and why. Kozak told journalists unequivocally on 23 September that he has no intention of running for president in 2008 when Putin's second term expires.
The 20 September mortar attack on Tskhinvali, the capital of the unrecognized Republic of South Ossetia, has not only undermined the albeit remote possibility that the leadership of the breakaway republic might be persuaded to accept Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's peace proposal. International reactions to the attack, in which some 10 people were injured, suggest that the United States and the Council of Europe are not convinced by Georgian officials' attempts to offload the entire responsibility for the ongoing stalemate on to Russia, and hope to pressure Tbilisi to adopt a more conciliatory stance towards its two breakaway regions.
An opposition demonstration in Baku last month (Turan) The processing of applications from would-be candidates in the 6 November Azerbaijani parliamentary election ended on 7 September. Of a total of 2,149 applicants, 2,062 were formally registered (three subsequently withdrew), according to day.az on 8 September.
Valerii Kokov submitted his resignation as president of the Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria (RKB) to Russian President Vladimir Putin on 16 September, citing his deteriorating health, Russian media reported. Kokov, who is 66, has headed the republic for 14 years. He has undergone at least one operation for throat cancer, and at the time of his resignation he was reportedly hospitalized in Moscow. In line with an unwritten law, the next president will almost certainly, like Kokov, be a Kabardian -- Kabardians are the republic's largest ethnic group and account for 46 percent of the RKB's total population of some 897,000.
President Sergei Bagapsh, Prime Minister Aleksandr Ankvab, parliament speaker Nugzar Ashuba, together with government ministers, parliamentary deputies, and district administrators attended the presentation in Sukhum on 9 September of a new draft program for the socioeconomic development of the unrecognized Republic of Abkhazia, apsny.ru reported. That desired economic upswing is not, however, seen as an end in itself but as part of the broader process of strengthening Abkhaz statehood.
President Aliyev is coming under increasing international pressure to hold free elections (AFP) In the run-up to the parliamentary elections scheduled for 6 November, Azerbaijani leaders face an unenviable dilemma.
Will one of these leaders destroy the CIS? Meeting in the wilds of Belarus on 8 December 1991, the presidents of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus announced the creation of a new Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) on the ruins of the crumbling USSR. Two weeks later, on 21 December 1991, the presidents of 11 former Soviet republics (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan) met in Almaty and signed a protocol to that declaration affirming their countries' membership in the CIS.
Abdul-Khalim Sadullaev (file photo) Following his May reorganization of the Chechen military command, in early August Abdul-Khalim Sadullaev issued decrees disbanding the Chechen government and dismissing the network of envoys abroad that he inherited from his predecessor, President Aslan Maskhadov. Sadullaev explained his reasons for doing so in an address to the Chechen people posted on 19 August on chechenpress.org.
The fears of many foreign scholars that the Tenth Finno-Ugric Congress that took place this week in the capital of the Republic of Marii El would be hijacked by the republican government following the untimely death in July of its president have proved well-founded. According the Tallin-based Information Centre of Finno-Ugric Peoples and a U.S. scholar who attended the congress, the republican authorities went to extraordinary lengths to prevent any contact between foreign delegates and members of the Mari national movement Mari Ushem. At the same time, Marii El President Leonid Markelov assured congress participants in Yoshkar-Ola of his commitment to democratization and equal rights for the Mari minority, and he dismissed unfavorable commentary as "unfounded attacks by the Finnish and Estonian press." (For brief background on this minority group, see "Who are the Maris?" --> /featuresarticle/2005/08/99fff660-2b82-423e-968b-ed117d76e4b9.html .)
The foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan are scheduled to meet in Moscow on 23 August to resume their talks on approaches to resolving the Karabakh conflict. Days later, the two countries' presidents, Robert Kocharian and Ilham Aliyev, will meet in Kazan on the sidelines of a CIS summit to address the same issue. But although international mediators from the OSCE Minsk Group expressed cautious optimism after visiting Baku, Stepanakert, and Yerevan in early July, they and senior officials in Baku have warned in recent days that there is little chance the two presidents will sign a major peace accord in Kazan.
Senior Russian officials and human rights activists alike have predicted in recent weeks that Kabardino-Balkaria, with a total population of some 800,000, could become the next North Caucasus federation subject to descend into chaos, following Chechnya and Daghestan. Periodic reports in the Russian media of the "neutralization" of individual, or groups of, Islamic militants would seem to substantiate the comparison with Chechnya and Daghestan. But armed Islamic militants are not the only threat to stability in the Kabardino-Balkarskaya Republic (KBR) -- and might not even pose the most serious danger.
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