Staunton, July 22 – More than two out of every three Dagestani men between the ages of 20 and 24 living in rural areas of that North Caucasus republic are unemployed, a situation that is leading to their radicalization and providing new recruits for both anti-Russian militants and the criminal world, according to official data […]
Staunton, July 3 – Many commentators have speculated about the possibility that the fighting in eastern Ukraine could spill back into the Russian Federation, but now, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, head of the North Caucasian republic of Ingushetia, has pointed to a way this could easily happen that Ukrainian sources have suggested but that has attracted little […]
Staunton, July 3 – Yesterday, Izvestiya reported that Vladimir Putin has signed a law under the terms of which the government will engage in strategic planning in five-year intervals to promote “improving the standard of living of the population, the growth of the Russian economy and the guaranteeing of the security of the country”. This […]
Staunton, July 2 – The consequences of Vladimir Putin’s much-ballyhooed “Winter Olympics in the Subtropics” continue to unfold with officials cutting back on the promises they made to develop the tourism industry in the North Caucasus even as they continue to persecute those who objected to holding the competition in Sochi. Two weeks ago, Aleksandr […]
Staunton, June 24 – At least since the beginning of the Soviet period, Moscow’s security services have sought to penetrate, divide and disorder ethnic organizations by covert means, an approach that has given the Russian government deniability because these actions typically are exposed only by inference from what is taking place or by opponents or […]
Staunton, June 17 – Given how heavily armed the population of Dagestan remains, the authorities in that North Caucasus republic have launched a gun buy-back program in which citizens can turn in illegal weapons for cash. But experts doubt that many Dagestanis will do so because the amount of money offered is so small and […]
Staunton, June 9 – Dagestani natives don’t divide the peoples of their republic between the more numerous and the smaller but rather between those who fought to the death for Daghestan against invaders and others which didn’t and instead surrendered quickly and collaborated, according to a professor at Daghestan State University. Timur Aytberov said that […]
Staunton, 3 June – In an echo of the success Abkhazians had in pressing for the ouster of their republic’s leader, 271 delegates to a May 31 meeting in Makhachkala calling itself “the Extraordinary Congress of the Peoples of Dagestan” has demanded that Moscow fire Ramazan Abdulatipov as republic head and replace him with one […]
Staunton, 2 June – In a classic example of how international attention can restrain Russian officials and how the end of such attention frees them to resume what they were doing, an animal rights activist reports that Sochi officials have restarted their campaign to kill homeless animals since Western journalists left following the Olympiad. Tatyana […]
Staunton, May 30 – Now that the Chechens have become involved as foot soldiers in Vladimir Putin’s campaign to destabilize and potentially occupy portions of Ukraine, it is worth comparing Moscow’s “counter-terrorist” campaign in the North Caucasus with what Kyiv is doing in its eastern region. Such a comparison is especially useful now because it […]
