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Dunja Mijatovic, OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, has issued a statement, in which she has expressed her concern about the sentence of Azerbaijani bloggers Abdul Abilov and Omar Mamedov to imprisonment. Dunja Mijatovic has stated that the suppression of freedom of the media and of expression is a serious breach of the country's commitments to OSCE.

In Azerbaijan, Ramzi Zeinalov, a resident of the town of Sabirabad, has been arrested for two months on a charge of disorderly conduct in connection with the incident with shaving a believer's beard. This was told to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent by Ibragim Ibragimov, Assistant Prosecutor of the Sabirabad District.

The "Caucasian Knot" announces the establishment of the annual contest for journalists, who write about Caucasus. The prizes will be awarded in memory of Dagestani journalist Akhmednabi Akhmednabiev. The contest accepts texts written both by Russian and foreign journalists.

The "Caucasian Knot" correspondent reports with reference to local residents that today in the village of Maidanskoe, Untsukul District of Dagestan, law enforcers have blown up eight households.

The defence did a huge job of proving the innocence of the temporarily removed from office Mayor of Makhachkala Said Amirov and his nephew Yusup Djaparov, as Vladimir Postanyuk, the defence group leader, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent. The advocates urge the court to make a fair decision.

The Azerbaijani Ministry of Defence (MoD) has recommended its servicemen to refrain from fasting during the month of Ramadan – from June 29 to July 28. Several experts have expressed the opinion that this recommendation violates the provisions of the country's Constitution.

The "Caucasian Knot" correspondent was told by residents of the village of Maidanskoe, Untsukul District of Dagestan, that law enforcers had beaten up Rizvan Ustarov, 29, the Imam of the local mosque. Also, for refusing to participate in the sweeping of the village, they beat up Abu-Gasan Nurmagomedov, the head of the rural administration, eyewitnesses assert.

As of July 8, the number of refugees from Ukraine registered in Russia reached more than 167,000 people. This was reported by Pavel Astakhov, the Russian Children's Ombudsman under the President of the Russian Federation.

In the Krasnodar Territory, the victims in the criminal case against the organized crime grouping from the Cossack village of Kuschevskaya have sent an appeal to the Investigating Committee of the Russian Federation. The victims insist on a genetic examination and their personal involvement in the identification of the body of Sergey Tsapok, the deceased leader of the criminal grouping.

The verdict to Ruslan Kutaev, President of the Assembly of Caucasian Nations, will be appealed against. This was announced by Pyotr Zaikin, an advocate of the human rights defender. The decision of the Urus-Martan City Court pronounced against Ruslan Kutaev, is politically motivated and unprecedentedly severe, and the very criminal case was fabricated. This was stated by experts in the field of human rights protection.

On July 3, in Grozny, law enforcers killed Khusein Dakhtaev, who was suspected of the murder of a staff member of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA). Residents of the Chechen capital state that the suspect was shot dead without any warning.

Ukrainian refugees, accommodated in the Volgograd Region, have filed an appeal to the State Duma of the Russian Federation, where the forced migrants raised issues on their employment and repatriation. The refugees ask the Russian State Duma to define their status and explain it to them.

On July 7, in Armenia, at the trial of Volodya Avetisyan, a retired Colonel and a Karabakh War veteran, the public prosecutor asked to sentence him to 6.5 years of imprisonment. In his final speech, Volodya Avetisyan refused to plead guilty. The pronouncement of the verdict has been postponed for indefinite period.

On July 6, the Untsukul District of Dagestan was put under the counterterrorist operation (CTO) regime. According to the NAC, the special operation claimed the life of one law enforcer; three other power agents were wounded. Five suspected militants were killed; and three of them were identified as Rasul Gadjiev, Abdulkhalim Gadjiev and Magomed Adalaev.

The lawyer Pyotr Zaikin has informed the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that today the Urus-Martan City Court sentenced Ruslan Kutaev, the President of the Assembly of Caucasian Nations, to four years of imprisonment in a general regime colony. The court also banned Kutaev for one more year to attend public events and be engaged in any public activities.

In the morning on July 7, Mekhman Guseinov, 25, a blogger and an employee of the Institute of Reporters' Freedom and Safety (IRFS) of Azerbaijan, was detained and taken to Nasimi district police of Baku and was released three hours later, the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent reports.

Sergey Tsapok, convicted for organizing a massacre in the village of Kuschevskaya, was found dead in a cell of the SIZO (pre-trial prison) of Krasnodar, the territorial ID of the ICRF has reported today. No traces of violent death were found on his body; and the preliminary reason thereof is a heart failure, said the FSIN (Russia's Federal Penitentiary Service).

The consideration of the petition lodged by Deputy Public Prosecutor of the Krasnodar Territory demanding to cancel the decision of the Tuapse District Court to place the ecologist Evgeny Vitishko for three years into a colony-settlement was scheduled by the Krasnodar Territorial Court for July 16, Alexander Popkov, Vitishko's advocate, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

The screening of the film "Ordered to Forget" can not incite any interethnic or inter-confessional enmity – this is the conclusion of Professor Evgeny Tarasov, the Department Head at the Linguistics Institute of the RussianAcademy of Sciences, who made a linguistic examination of the film banned for screening by the Ministry of Culture.

By July 6, the Southern Federal District (SFD) had deployed 80 stationary and five field temporary accommodation centres (TACs), which received 6917 refugees from the Donetsk and Lugansk Regions of Ukraine, said the press service of the Southern Regional Centre of the Russia's Ministry for Emergencies (MfE).