News

Persecution of pacifists in Southern Russia; Ramzan Kadyrov’s reaction to the accusations of the Security Service of Ukraine; deployment of the Azerbaijani security forces in Lachin, – see the review of these and other events in the Caucasus during the week of August 22-28, 2022, prepared by the “Caucasian Knot”.

According to experts interviewed by the “Caucasian Knot”, Russian peacekeepers will stay in the Lachin Corridor until the launch of an alternative road from Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia, and then they will change their location and take control of the new route.

Today, one of the foreign doctors admitted by the Georgian Ministry for Public Health to examine former President Mikhail Saakashvili has arrived at a Tbilisi clinic. He and his colleagues should examine whether the former Georgian President is seriously ill and whether his illness prevents him from serving his sentence, a politician’s advocate reports.

In Makhachkala, two solo pickets were held by journalists Magomed Magomedov and Idris Yusupov with the demand to stop the criminal prosecution of Abdulmumin Gadjiev and to release political prisoners.

Parents of the Armenian soldiers who perished in the 2020 Karabakh war have announced a protest action demanding to arrest Nikol Pashinyan, the Premier, inviting political forces and activists to join them.

In January-July, 2022, Dagestan registered the largest number of terrorist crimes among Russian regions – it follows from the data of the Russia's General Prosecutor's Office (GPO). The top five of the rating also includes Ingushetia, Chechnya and Kabardino-Balkaria.

The General Prosecutor's Office (GPO) has failed yet with the demand voiced out by the court on August 1 to eliminate violations in the case of the death of Inal Djabiev, Sergey Bitiev, the Acting Public Prosecutor of South Ossetia has informed. Those guilty of Djabiev's death remain unpunished for two years, Telegram users have pointed out.

The author of the video with remarks to tourists visiting Dagestan about their appearance behaved aggressively and was sparking the conflict despite the tourists' apologies, Telegram users have noted in the comments to the video.

At the dwelling settlements located in the Lachin Corridor that came under the control of Baku, military police posts began operating, the Azeri Ministry of Defence (MoD) has announced.

Chechen athletes should agree their behaviour when outside the republic with authorities, local officials have announced, explaining this by the concern for the image of the Chechen people.

The remarks of passers-by to tourists about their appearance in Chechnya are quite appropriate, users of the Chechen public wrote after a video of men walking down the street in shorts. Hotels and the Ministry of Tourism should control tourists' behaviour, others have objected.

Officials will take Ramzan Kadyrov's words about depriving the families of those who refused to go to serve in law enforcement bodies as a guide to action; such methods of pressure indicate a shortage of people who want to get enrolled in new structures, Svetlana Gannushkina and Ruslan Kutaev, human rights defenders, have pointed out.

Ramazan Dugiev, an Ingush sign language interpreter, has been sentenced to 1.5 years of conditional imprisonment for alleged using violence against law enforcers during 2019 protests in Magas.

The appointment of Philip T. Reeker as senior adviser on negotiations in the Caucasus has shown that the USA treats the OSCE Minsk Group as a relevant format for the settlement of the Karabakh conflict, Armenian political analysts believe.

Politically motivated arrests are widespread in Azerbaijan; they are applied voluntarily in violation of national laws and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the NGO "Institute for Democratic Initiatives" (IDI) has stated.

The hunger strike will not stop until the leadership of the Rustavi Prison is replaced, the prisoners, who continue the action because of absence of medical care and ban on relatives' visits.

A police major is suspected of attacking Igor Kalyapin, the founder of the "Committee against Torture"*; the policeman has been fired, the Human Rights Council (HRC) has informed.

The human rights project "Support for Political Prisoners" has announced Zarema Musaeva to be a political prisoner; the woman is being tried in Chechnya under the articles of an assault on a law enforcer and a fraud.

A court in Tbilisi has released on bail three oppositionists detained during a rally in support of ex-President of Georgia Mikheil (Mikhail) Saakashvili. One of them said he was not going to pay the bail.

Ramzan Kadyrov has called on the President of Russia to let Chechen fighters to complete the special military operation in Ukraine. According to him version, the Chechen units are ready to "go to Europe."