News

Today, Russia has concluded treaties on friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance with Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The solemn signing ceremony took place in the Kremlin.

On September 16, Liudmila Alekseeva, well-known human rights defender and leader of the Moscow Helsinki Group (MHG) arrived to Ingushetia.

September 16 was 40 days after the start of the broad-scale warfare in South Ossetia. A number of regions of the South Federal District (SFD) held mourning actions in memory of the victims of the armed conflict.

On August 16, the members of the All-Russian Public Organization "Voice of Beslan" arrived to the House of Government in Vladikavkaz to meet the leader of North Ossetia Taimuraz Mamsurov and ask him to help in erecting a transparent dome over the destroyed building of School No. 1 in Beslan.

A lengthy litigation of the Regional Public Movement "Chechen Committee of National Salvation" (ChCNS) against the former Department of the Federal Registration Service of Russia for the Republic of Ingushetia (DFRS for RI) was over on September 12 victoriously for the claimant - the ChCNS.

On September 15, President of Russia Dmitri Medvedev signed his statements about conclusion of treaties on friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance with South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Sergey Lavrov, head of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has admitted that all the parties of the military actions in South Ossetia were "exorbitant" in their warfare.

On September 15, in the territory of Russian capital, two unidentified persons beat and knifed a citizen of Azerbaijan. Earlier in Moscow, a native of Chechnya was killed.

In the opinion of Moscow electoral expert Sergey Davidis, the prosecution of former Mayor of Stavropol Dmitri Kuzmin, who has applied for political asylum in one of European countries, has political character and is connected with the victory of the Party "Spravedlivaya Rossiya" (Fair Russia), which was headed by Kuzmin, at elections to the Territorial Parliament in March 2007.

The Information Department of the Ministry for Emergencies of the Russian Federation has reported that almost 33,000 persons, who had left South Ossetia after Georgia's attack, have returned to their homeland. In total, according to the Federal Migratory Service, over 34,500 persons had left the Republic.

In the long term, the border between Russia and Abkhazia will be transparent, same as between EU countries, said the head of Russian MFA Sergey Lavrov, who paid a visit to Abkhazia.

Under the updated information, the explosion in the marketplace located at No. 1 Lianozovskiy Proezd, committed on Sunday, September 14 in the afternoon, wounded four persons, including a high school pupil, a citizen of Azerbaijan and a woman-pensioner of 68.

Today, the Armenian opposition has declared its intention to hold a mass nationwide rally. In the opinion of Levon Zarubyan, spokesman of the oppositional Armenian National Congress, the rally should become the "decisive event."

Today at a joint press conference in Tbilisi, spokesmen of the Ministries of Defence, Internal Affairs and Public Health gave new figures of Georgian casualties in the conflict with Russia. Under the aggregated data, 168 militaries were lost. Meanwhile, the Russian military reconnaissance asserts that Georgia had lost about three thousand power agents.

Today, the EU Council has made an official decision to send a mission of 200 European observers to Georgia. It is planned to place them in the buffer zone adjacent from the Georgian side to the territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Today, Ingushetia's law enforcers have conducted searches in houses of Maksharip Aushev and Magomed Khazbiev, Ingush oppositionists. However, according to Mr Khazbiev, nothing was confiscated in the course of these searches.

Former Minister of Defence of Georgia Irakliy Okruashvili stated on September 14 that President of Georgia Mikhail Saakashvili had been planning for a long time a military operation with the aim to regain control over South Ossetia. According to his version, back in 2005 Georgia was developing plans of capturing Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

The Prosecutor's Office of the city of Volgodonsk (Rostov Region) has studied and recognized lawful the initiation of Criminal Case No. 2008717504 of September 5, 2008, on the fact of trafficking in people committed in relation to two and more persons with confiscation of IDs of the victims.

Armen Arutyunyan, Ombudsman of Armenia, has called the temporary parliamentary commission in charge of investigating the events of March 1 to scrutinize the facts presented in the film prepared by the public commission for studying the events on March 1, and if necessary, to take measures to examine the film for defining its authenticity.

In the evening on September 12, in the centre of Yerevan, capital of Armenia, near the building of the Yerevan State Conservatory, a fight burst out between members of oppositional youth public organizations and the police.