News

The rapper Said Aliev, more broadly known as Dado, was arrested in Baku. His relatives believe that the young singer is persecuted for his video clip YPX, in which he criticises the practice of bribe-taking among road police.

The Itum-Kalin District of Chechnya has held a broad-scale presentation of the alpine ski resort "Veduchi" with participation of famous athletes from nine countries.

In January, the utility employees of the Chechen capital managed to collect 121 percent of all types of payments for housing and municipal services. Residents of Grozny report about raids aimed to disconnect the debtors from gas, electricity and water supplies.

A possible warfare launched against Iran will throw the development of Southern Caucasus back for many years; the tension is already telling on the attractiveness of economic projects. This was stated by the participants of the video bridge "Moscow – Astana – Yerevan" that was held on February 25 in Moscow in the presence of the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

Suren Gazaryan from Krasnodar, a member of the Coordination Board of the Russian opposition and an activist of the "Ecological Watch for Northern Caucasus", has been nominated for the Netizen Prize.

On February 28, Nogorno-Karabakh marked the anniversary of the tragedy in Sumgait. The eyewitnesses of those events believe that the pogroms should be adequately assessed by the world community, while Azerbaijan should compensate the material damage and moral harm suffered by the victims.

On February 28, a number of Abkhazian oppositional organizations held a protest rally in Sukhumi against increasing tariffs on power, during which they also moved a demand to dismiss the government.

The Armenian oppositional forces believe that the presidential election was held with violations and were falsified. This was stated by the election offices of the ex-candidates, who took part in the 2013 presidential election.

Forced resettlers from the temporary accommodation centre (TAC) named "Promzhilbaza" and located in the city of Karabulak received information about the upcoming removal of their camp scheduled for March 1.

On February 28, the city of Vladikavkaz started collecting signatures in favour of preserving the styles of wrestling – free, Greco-Roman and women's – in the Olympic programme. This is one of the elements of the action "Let's save Olympic wrestling", which was a reaction to the decision of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to exclude wrestling from the Olympic programme.

The Supreme Court (SC) of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic (KBR) has cancelled compensations of moral harm to the last 60 remaining members of the group of former liquidators of the accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (NPP). Earlier, they were paid their compensations under the rulings of the Nalchik City and Terek District Courts.

Today, the Stavropol Territorial Court has finished announcing the verdict on the case of three locals accused of preparing and committing terror acts in Pyatigorsk and Stavropol. The terms of imprisonment requested by the accusation have been upheld.

On February 26, the Central Election Commission (CEC) of Georgia registered an initiative group of three persons that had proposed to start collecting signatures in favour of election of the country's president by the parliament. For the incumbent president to appoint referendum, they need to collect 200,000 signatures within three months.

Raffi Ovannisyan, a former presidential candidate and the leader of the oppositional party named "Heritage", has announced continuation of his struggle and called to dismiss those guilty of falsifying the election outcomes.

Today, the judicial panel on criminal cases of the Supreme Court (SC) of the Russian Federation has failed for the second time to consider the cassation complaint lodged by the defence of the convict in the murder case of Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist of the "Novaya Gazeta". Because of Pavlyuchenkov's illness, the consideration was indefinitely postponed.

The administration of Stavropol has refused to coordinate an information picket applied for in the city centre by the unregistered nationalistic party "Novaya Sila" (New Force) for March 1 in the square near the central bus station.

In the opinion of Georgy Kanashvili, the executive director of the NGO "Caucasian Home – Centre of Cultural Relations", the adaptation commissions, which operate in the regions of Northern Caucasus, make an additional instrument for bringing militants back to peaceful life; however, the commissions are not enough.

In Sochi, the trial on the murder of the war veteran Antonina Maevskaya is interrogating the witnesses; five of them were questioned at the sessions on February 26 and 27.

Investigators of the Chief Prosecutor's Office of Georgia have questioned Nino Burdzhanadze, the ex-speaker of the parliament and the leader of the party "Democratic Movement – United Georgia" about the events of May 26, 2011. The interrogation lasted for six hours.

Prosecutor Generals’ of Russia together with Rosfinnadzor, the Ministry of Interior Affairs and Federal Security Service started inspection of target use of budget funds in “North-Caucasian Resorts” limited company (NCR), the “Caucasian Knot” correspondent was told by an official of the supervisory office.