Guide

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.

Ruslan Kutaev (born in 1957, resident of Achkhoi-Martan village, Chechen Republic) is the President of the international public-political movement "Assembly of Caucasian Nations", head of the international committee on North Caucasus problems, member of the Supreme Political Council of the party ‘Alliance of Greens and Social Democrats’. Kutaev has been kept under arrest since February 20, 2014 on charges of illegal drug possession. On June 19, 2014, the Human Rights Centre (HRC) "Memorial" recognized Kutaev to be a political prisoner. On July 7 he was sentenced to four years of imprisonment in general regime colony.

The "Caucasian Knot" has compiled a set of most serious environmental problems associated with the Olympic Games in Sochi. The below chronology is based on the materials of the "Caucasian Knot" correspondents for the period from 2006 to 2013.

The 2014 Winter Olympic Games and the city of Sochi are more and more often an object of attention of Russian and foreign mass media. Journalists try to get information about what happens in the city not only from official sources, but also from civil society activists. In order to help our Russian and foreign colleagues, the editorial board of the "Caucasian Knot" hereby presents a brief directory with contact data of independent Sochi activists, lawyers, ecologists and politicians, who are ready to communicate with media people. The directory also provides contacts of the city and territorial officials and power bodies.

According to calculations made by the "Caucasian Knot", starting from 2000, the territory of Russia saw 81 terror acts, involving 123 suicide bombers with at least 52 female suicide bombers among them. The terror acts killed 1216 persons and wounded more than 3260 persons.

In 2013, in the Krasnodar Territory, a broad range of civil and political activists were persecuted by local authorities. The pretexts were the campaign launched by the authorities to tighten control over non-profit organizations (NPOs) and the growing social tension related to the upcoming Olympic Games in Sochi. The "Caucasian Knot" has compiled the most notable cases of pressure on activists in Krasnodar and Sochi.

During the last twelve years, in the territory of Russia, 46 female suicide bombers committed 26 terror acts (some terror acts involved several women at the same time).

This is a set of rules and morals that guide Muslims in their everyday life. Like a lot in the Muslim world, the Muslim ethic is primarily based on the Koran and Sunnah.

These are holidays traditionally celebrated by Muslims. The most important of them are common to the entire Muslim world.