News

Residents of the town of Berdzor and the village of Akhavno in Nagorno-Karabakh must leave their houses by August 20, from that day on communications will be cut off the settlements, local authorities have announced.

Nikol Pashinyan, the Armenian Prime Minister, has declared August 17 and 18 to be the days of mourning over those who perished in the "Surmalu" shopping centre. Three people remain on the list of missing persons; the fire in the shopping centre is completely extinguished, the Armenian Ministry for Emergencies (MfE) has informed.

A court in Rostov-on-Don began considering the case of Andzor Kudaev, a native of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic (KBR), whom investigators have accused of aiding terrorists and possessing weapons. In their turn, human rights defenders assert that the indictment is based on Kudaev's confessions obtained under torture.

Two men, standing in garbage cans against the background of a wall with barbed wire, apologized for stuffing their acquaintance into a similar garbage can.

Today, the body of Leonid Gutrits, the former head of the Gulkevichi District, was found near the building of the local prosecutor’s office, and the media reported that the official left a suicide note. Lawsuits have been going on against the official for several years in a case on fraud and a case on the death of a child in a water park, local advocate Sergey Zemtsov reports.

A minefield was discovered at the Sarybaba height, which was returned under the control of Baku during the “Retribution” operation on August 3.

Information about the raids of Chechen law enforcers on the resorts of Northern Caucasus frightened residents of Chechnya, and part of the vacationers decided to return home. This was reported by an author of a comment on the “Caucasian Knot”. Several social media users suggested that young people who did not follow the rules of conduct prescribed in Chechnya on vacation could be expected to be sent to Ukraine.

The Elista City Court has fined a local resident and her daughter by 10,000 roubles each, and her son – by 20,000 roubles for their pickets in defence of the freedom of speech that were not sanctioned by the authorities. All the family members were charged with violating the rules for holding a rally.

After the dismissal of Vladimir Pukhaev, the head of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) of South Ossetia, his several subordinates wrote resignations reports in solidarity with their boss, an MoD's source has informed.

16 people perished and 17 others are still missing as a result of an explosion and subsequent fire that occurred at the "Surmalu" shopping centre (mall) in Yerevan, the Armenian Ministry for Emergencies (MfE) has informed.

Anar Aliev, an activist who came from Germany to visit his sick father, was arrested in Azerbaijan on charges of large-scale drug dealing; and his wife was banned from leaving the country. She said that Anar had confessed under pressure.

Elnur Shakhverdiev, a member of the Astara district branch of the oppositional Republican Alternative (ReAl) Party, has been arrested on charges of drug use. The activist's relatives and a party representative have doubted the credibility of charges, suggesting that Shakhverdiev was persecuted for criticizing authorities.

During the week from August 8 to August 14, 2022, there were no reports about any casualties or wounded persons during the armed conflict in Northern Caucasus. These are the results of the monitoring run by the "Caucasian Knot" based on its own sources and information from open sources.

The death toll from the explosion and fire at the "Surmalu" shopping centre in Yerevan has risen to 10.

Until August 29, the Aishat Kadyrova’s fashion house “Firdaws” is to provide explanations to the Moscow Arbitration Court on a claim filed by the Joint-Stock Company (JSC) “Condé Nast” publishing house, which demanded to return a debt and pay a penalty.

In Yerevan, rescuers removed the body of the seventh victim from the ruins of the “Surmalu” shopping centre. The number of missing people has risen to 17.

Persecution of pacifists in the southern regions of Russia; explosion in a shopping centre in Yerevan; events in Georgia and South Ossetia on the occasion of the 14th anniversary of the start of the “Five-Day War”; complaints about torture from convicts after an attack on prison warders in Kalmykia; completion of the construction of a road along the new route of the Lachin corridor, – see the review of these and other events in the Caucasus during the week of August 8-14, 2022, prepared by the “Caucasian Knot”.

When explaining the refusal to institute a criminal case, the police said that a warder and prisoners of an Azerbaijani penal colony did not confirm the information that journalist Polad Aslanov was beaten by a cellmate.

A tourist who tried to find a deserted place to spend time with a woman in the mountains of Dagestan posted a video with an apology to residents of the republic. Guests of Dagestan should respect local customs, some users of the “VKontakte” media outlet point out. Their opponents considered unacceptable the behaviour of local residents who rudely scolded the couple.

The police and the FSB suspected a resident of Ingushetia of discrediting the Russian Armed Forces because of his comment on a social media outlet, posted four days before the start of the special military operation.