News

On April 4, the "Dmanisi Salvation Fund", set up by activists of the Georgian opposition and NGOs, announced the completion of raising money to buy out a 300-year-old eucalyptus after winning the tender.

A former Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili has criticized the socio-economic situation in the country and announced his intention to return to Georgia. However, political analysts believe that he will not be able to return there in the near future, while his supporters from the "United National Movement" (UNM) Party have the resources to repeat the "Revolution of Roses".

The court sentenced a 37-year-old resident of Grozny, found guilty for an assassination attempt on Ingush Imam Isa Tsechoev, to ten years of imprisonment.

The HALO Trust expects permission from Georgia to clear mines in a seven-kilometre section of its border, where, according to the organization, the mines were laid by Azerbaijani soldiers during the war with Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan puts pressure on Georgia and prevents demining, experts believe.

On April 2, a three-year-old boy from Baksan was attacked by a pack of stray dogs, one of the townspeople has reported.

Today, the court in Grozny agreed not to consider the complaint against investigators' actions after the investigator cancelled his previous refusal to initiate a case on the marijuana planted on Titiev. This was reported by the Human Rights Centre (HRC) "Memorial".

A court in Khasavyurt has acquitted the policeman Imambek Taisonov, accused of abuse of power and extortion, admitting that investigators failed to check the policeman's complaints about torture. Taisonov himself confirmed that he had been tortured and demanded to confess to committing a crime.

The Russians, hospitalized after the explosion in the Burger King Cafe in Yerevan, have left for their homeland. This was reported by the Yerevan St Gregory the Illuminator Medical Centre.

On April 3, Ingush leader Yunus-Bek Evkurov awarded fighter of a military police battalion who returned from the Middle East.

Chechnya has announced the month of voluntary cleaning works on Saturdays (subbotniks) starting from March. Organizations and institutions are obliged at their own expense to clean and put in order the territories assigned to them. Those people who refuse to participate in subbotniks will face big problems, residents of Grozny report.

In Volgograd, at the Jewish community centre, about 80 people celebrated the beginning of Pesach, one of the main holidays for the Jews. The authorities of Volgograd ignore the anti-Semitic attacks of local political and public figures, claim members of the Jewish community interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot".

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg court has sent questions to Azerbaijani authorities concerning battles near the border village of Chinari, where one Azerbaijani and three Armenian soldiers perished.

The prosecutor's office found violations of fire safety regulations in two Stavropol shopping centres – "Cosmos" and "Moscow" – and demanded to close them until the violations are eliminated.

Since April 2017, a total of 114 persons suspected of non-traditional sexual orientation have left Chechnya with the help of the "Russian LGBT Network". 92 of them are already outside of Russia, said Igor Kochetkov, the chairman of the network.

During the last 24 hours, the Armenian Armed Forces violated the ceasefire in the Karabakh conflict zone for 95 times by using, among other weapons, heavy machine guns. This was reported by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) of Azerbaijan.

There is still a risk of the resumption of the war in the Karabakh conflict zone. This opinion has been voiced by military experts in Azerbaijan interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot". Residents of the front-line villages refuse to leave their houses, despite the fear and shelling.

In Dagestan, the situation with violence against women hardly differs from the situation in Russia as a whole, reported Svetlana Anokhina and Irina Kosterina, when commenting on a murder of a young woman in Khasavyurt. According to investigators' version, the murder was committed out of jealousy.

In Nagorno-Karabakh, local residents laid flowers on the graves of the victims of the 2016 "April War" to pay tribute to their memory. In the Tumi village of the Hadrut District, a cross stone was installed in honour of killed officer Suren Melkumyan.

An explosion of an oxygen cylinder occurred in the Burger King Cafe located in the centre of Yerevan, the capital of Armenia.

On April 4, the Staropromyslovsky District Court of Grozny will consider the complaint of the advocate against investigators' repeated refusal to initiate a case on the application lodged by Oyub Titiev, a rights defender, about the marijuana that was planted on him.