Guide

In May 2025, the leader of Chechnya stated that he asked to be released from the post. However, on the other day, Ramzan Kadyrov claimed that he was misunderstood. Over the past ten years, the leader of Chechnya has announced his desire to resign at least seven times and remained in office.

During the six days of Russia's special military operation in Ukraine, a lot of rumours and conjectures have appeared. What is really known about the participation of Chechen law enforcers, about their losses and statements of the republic's leadership, – read the details in the reference material of the "Caucasian Knot".

The head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, and his entourage have attacked the Yangulbaev family with threats; and on February 2, they organized a rally in central Grozny to condemn the family. How the conflict began, what are Kadyrov's accusations and the Yangulbaevs' answer, as well as what does the oppositional Telegram channel has to do with it – see below in the reference material of the "Caucasian Knot".

Ramadan (Arabic) or Ramazan (Persian and Turkic) is the ninth month of the Muslim lunar calendar, the month of fasting (as-saum). Ramadan is the month of spiritual and moral cleaning, as well as of faith and will strengthening. In 2020, Ramadan began at sunset on April 23; the first day of fasting (Uraza) was April 24; and the month will end on May 23.

The day of October 23, 2019, marked the 17th anniversary of the seizure of the Dubrovka Theatre Centre. The terror act took place in Moscow, on October 23-26, 2002. A group of armed militants led by Movsar Baraev took 916 hostages. The terrorists demanded an immediate cessation of hostilities in Chechnya and the withdrawal of federal troops from the republic. During rescue operation 130 hostages, including 10 children, were killed, and more than 700 other hostages were injured.

On September 5, 2016, Chechen journalist Zhalaudi Geriev, working for the 'Caucasian Knot', was sentenced to three years of imprisonment in a penal colony on charges of drug possession. Prior to his arrest, on April 16, 2016, Geriev was kidnapped by armed men on his way to the airport after he had already bought an airline ticket and registered online. After kidnapping law enforcers confiscated his phones and backpack, which allegedly contained drugs. The armed men then took the journalist to the forest and questioned him, tying his hands and putting a plastic bag over his head.

February 23 marks 75 years since the beginning of the Stalin's deportation of Chechen and Ingush people. However, the memorial day is not officially marked in Chechnya itself. Ruslan Kutaev, the chair of the Assembly of the Peoples of the Caucasus, who publicly spoke in 2014 against the ban on the February mourning events, was sentenced on the falsified charge and sent to prison for almost four years.

The history of kidnappings, torture and murders of gays in Chechnya has touched on not only men, many of whom left Russia or went, well in advance, to study and work in other regions. The fate of a woman of non-traditional sexual orientation is entirely in the hands of her relatives; and they are no less cruel than law enforcers. The "Caucasian Knot" tells about what queer women face in Chechnya.

At the request of the "Caucasian Knot", a GIS expert, a graduate of the Cartography and Geoinformation Division of the Geography Department of the Moscow State University has analyzed, on the condition of anonymity, the maps of the Chechen Republic and the Republic of Ingushetia in the light of the agreement on the exchange of territories signed on September 26, and made a new map depicting the Ingush-Chechen border.

Two years have passed after the “four-day war”, but shelling and explosions on the demarcation line between Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia, and Azerbaijan never cease. Military and civilians are still dying. The “Caucasian Knot” has analyzed more than 500 reports of the Ministries of Defense of all parties to conflict and compiled a calendar of military operations for the second year of the so-called truce in the conflict zone.

The blood feud is a custom that had formed during the clannish social system as a universal means of defending the honour, dignity and property of the clan. It implies the duty of casualty's relatives to take revenge on the killer or his relatives. In recent months, several reasons have appeared to make sure – in Northern Caucasus, the blood feud is by no means a part of history; it continues acting as an actual social mechanism.

In France, billionaire Suleiman Kerimov, a senator from Dagestan, detained on November 20 at the Nice airport, was charged with laundering money through real estate transactions. For the investigation period, the French court released Suleiman Kerimov on bail of 5 million euros, banned him from leaving the Alpes-Maritimes Department and obliged him to regularly attend the police.

25 years ago, on August 14, 1992, the war in Abkhazia began. The conflict broke out after the Supreme Soviet of the Abkhaz ASSR, having restored the Constitution of Abkhazia of 1925, proclaimed the independence of the republic. The State Soviet of Georgia abolished this decision and deployed the troops of the National Guard of Georgia in Abkhazia.

The "Caucasian Knot" has gathered information about victims of conflict in Chechnya from among alleged militants – about those, who were killed or wounded in clashes with law enforcers and in committing terror acts in 2015 and 2016.

On March 20, 2017, the account "Chechen News" on the YouTube posted a video entitled "Meeting of Military Jamaat of Ichkeria". According to the captions to the video, it shows former fighters of the grouping "Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar, who had fought in Syria. In the video, armed people, whose faces are masked, discuss how they will "gather Muhajids."

In summer of 2014, Azerbaijan faced a wave of arrests of opposition politicians, journalists, and human rights defenders. In particular, the story of Leyla and Arif Yunus spouses got resonance beyond Azerbaijan. Baku officials declared inadmissibility of interference in the internal affairs of the state; in turn, opposition and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including the Amnesty International (AI), the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), the Human Rights Watch (HRW), protested against the actions of the state security of Azerbaijan.

It is a self-proclaimed separatist Islamic state and territorial formation in Northern Caucasus. It was recognized as a terrorist organization in the United States and Russia. The full name is the "Islamic State Imarat Kavkaz".

Different sources, including the Russia's FSB, have confirmed the information that militants from Russia are fighting for the Islamic State (IS) (earlier – the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – ISIL), a self-proclaimed entity in the territory of Syria and Iraq. The material of the "Caucasian Knot" below tells about penetration of natives of the Caucasus into the conflict zone and provides estimates of the number of them.