Liz Fuller writes the Caucasus Report blog for RFE/RL.
Magomed Yevloyev, the controversial owner of the outspoken opposition website ingushetiya.ru, died from a gunshot wound to the head, just hours after Interior Ministry personnel detained him as he arrived on his first visit for several years. His death will inevitably compound the alienation between the Ingush and the leadership of President Murat Zyazikov, which ingushetiya.ru has consistently criticized as corrupt, duplicitous, unable to reverse economic stagnation, and indifferent to social p
The Russian Constitution provides for admitting new territorial entities with the mutual consent of both parties, as well as for redrawing or abolishing borders between federation subjects.
On March 1, police and security forces in Yerevan resorted to violence to disperse thousands of supporters of former President Levon Ter-Petrossian who had taken to the streets to protest the official results of the February 19 presidential ballot that gave then-Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian the presidency.
Over the past four weeks, while international mediators have intensified their efforts to resolve the Abkhaz conflict, at least eight people have been killed in artillery exchanges in Georgia's unrecognized republic of South Ossetia.
August 1 marks the start of the campaign for the Azerbaijani presidential election scheduled for October 15. That incumbent Ilham Aliyev -- who succeeded his father, Heidar Aliyev, as president in 2003 in a ballot deemed by international monitors not to have met international standards for democratic elections -- will be reelected for a second term is a foregone conclusion.
But in practice, the plan has major flaws that call into question its acceptability to both Georgians and Abkhaz. And Russia has no interest in defusing a simmering situation that gives it leverage over the Georgian leadership.
Prominent on the agenda of visiting German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier's talks in Tbilisi on July 17, Sukhumi on July 18, and Moscow on July 19 will be the new three-stage Abkhaz peace proposal drafted by Germany in its capacity as one of the five members of the Friends of the UN Secretary-General for Georgia group of countries.
The Inter-Regional Public Organization Balkariya has protested the failure of the predominantly Kabardian republican leadership to comply with federal legislation protecting the rights of the Balkar minority.
Since Ramzan Kadyrov was formally installed as Chechnya's head in April 2007, he has emerged as the primary factor determining how the republic will evolve over the next decade.
Is Moscow still trying to wrong-foot Georgia's leadership into an intemperate response to demonstrate Tbilisi is not interested in a lasting settlement over Abkhazia?
The Georgian Finance Ministry has submitted a request to increase defense spending for 2008 by $202.8 million, or approximately 29 percent.
On June 16, the pro-government factions within the Armenian National Assembly voted unanimously in favor of setting up an ad hoc commission to investigate the March 1-2 clashes in Yerevan between supporters of defeated presidential candidate Levon Ter-Petrossian and security forces that resulted in 10 deaths. The conduct of an "independent, transparent, and credible inquiry" into the postelection violence was one of the key demands addressed to the Armenian authorities by the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) in a resolution adopted in mid-April.
Over the past 10 days, representatives of ethnic minorities in Azerbaijan have issued two separate public statements affirming their fear of assimilation and soliciting international support.
http://gdb.rferl.org/ED9AB4F1-3694-4116-80E7-678438802FF0_w203.jpg )) --> http://gdb.rferl.org/ED9AB4F1-3694-4116-80E7-678438802FF0_mw800_mh600.jpg Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian (file photo) (official site) In a June 9 address to prominent intellectuals and public figures who he hopes will agree to serve on his planned Public Chamber, President Serzh Sarkisian again argued the need for all political forces to unite to overcome the polarization that resulted from the flawed February 19 ballot in which he was elected president.
(RFE/RL) At his inauguration on January 13, 2007, as president of the Republic of Adygeya, former Maykop State Technical University Rector Aslancheryy Tkhakushinov said he would oppose any new effort to subsume Adygeya into the surrounding Krasnodar Krai.
Despite Western assertions that the procedural violations registered during the January 5 preterm Georgian presidential ballot were not on a scale that could have altered the final outcome, the Georgian opposition still refuses to accept the legitimacy of Mikheil Saakashvili's reelection with a reported 53.47 percent of the vote for a second five-year term.
Thirty-five years ago, on January 16, 1973, Ingush began congregating in front of the headquarters in Grozny of the Checheno-Ingush Oblast Committee (Obkom) of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) to demand either that the disputed Prigorodny Raion of neighboring North Ossetia be transferred to the Checheno-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR), or that the existing ban on allowing Ingush to return to their homes there be abolished.
The Armenian presidential election on February 19 will determine whether incumbent President Robert Kocharian, who is barred by the constitution from serving a third consecutive term, succeeds in handing over power to his anointed successor, Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian, whose Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) won a majority of seats in the parliament elected in May 2007.
On December 24, the Daghestan government's commission on rehabilitation and resettlement convened to review the progress to date in implementing a 1992 Russian government directive on reversing the forced resettlement in 1944 of thousands of Laks from villages in mountainous central Daghestan to a raion that at the time was part of the Checheno-Ingush ASSR, but was subsequently subsumed into Daghestan.
Mikheil Saakashvili exits a polling booth on January 5 (AFP) The preterm Georgian presidential election on January 5, intended to provide a ringing endorsement of incumbent Mikheil Saakashvili's track record, has instead underscored the extent to which his support has plummeted since his election in January 2004.
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