The Russian tinderbox known as Chechnya is smoldering once again, indicating a complete policy breakdown on the part of the Kremlin that has wide and deep repercussions for the outside world — including a greatly increased risk of terrorism at the 2014 Olympic Games. If the Obama administration does not act soon, it may have blood on its hands.
Current events coming out of the region look like a public relations nightmare for the Kremlin. First came the renewed insurrection: on October 19, 2010, Chechen rebels launched a bold direct assault on the Chechen parliament building in the capital city of Grozny, choosing the exact moment when a high-ranking Russian cabinet official was visiting. A few months earlier, the rebels had been even more provocative, attempting to assassinate the Kremlin’s puppet ruler Ramzan Kadyrov while he was watching a ...
Leader proposes volatile Chechnya as host cities for 2018 World Cup
Published: Saturday, Dec 4, 2010, 11:42 IST Place: Moscow | Agency: Reuters
The leader of Russia's volatile Chechnya region on Friday proposed adding its capital to the list of host cities for the 2018 World Cup.
"We are completing a sports complex in Grozny which is up to international standards... Naturally, we will offer our city for other matches," Ramzan Kadyrov, the Moscow-backed leader said on the official site chechnya.gov.ru.
A decade after Moscow drove separatists from power in the second of two wars, peace in Muslim Chechnya is shaky at best.
Russia, which on Thursday won the rights to host the world's biggest sporting event, is however unlikely to bring any matches to the North Caucasus, which includes Chechnya.
President Dmitry Medvedev last year said the region was Russia's biggest domestic political problem.
Islamist insurgents stage near daily attacks across the North Caucasus, especially Chechnya, neighbouring Dagestan and Ingushetia.
Russia has said it will build 13 stadiums and revamp three more for ...
Silvio Berlusconi, Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin pose for a photo aboard a passenger jet. The Italian PM reportedly laughed at the Wikileaks revelations; Putin accused the US of slander. Photograph: Vladimir Rodionov/AFP/Getty Images
It was as if WikiLeaks had turned a black and white photo of prime ministers and presidents into a Technicolor carnival fizzing with candour and comedy.
Leading the parade on Monday were Batman and Robin, aka Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, the prime minister and president of Russia who were compared to the characters by the US embassy in Moscow, leading Putin to accuse the US of slander in an interview with Larry King on CNN.
Meanwhile Turkmenistan's president, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, donned a "navy blue sailing cap, a French-style white-and-blue striped shirt and binoculars hanging around his neck" to hold a cabinet meeting on his ...
Window on Eurasia: Ethnicity a Basis for Rather than Threat to Democracy and Freedom, Tartu Conference Concludes
Paul Goble
Staunton, December 3 – Many analysts routinely assume that ethnic identity and the individual rights that are the foundation of a free society are competitive or even contradictory, but a conference at the University of Tartu in Estonia this week argued the reverse and suggested that "ethnic identity [itself] is the main precondition for democracy and freedom.” Without a strong sense of ethnic identification, its participants argued, a society will often lack the social cohesion democracy and individual freedom require. Moreover, when one nation ignores the claims of ethnic communities within its population, that undermines the chances for democracy and individual rights. Hosted this week by the Institute of the Rights of Peoples and the Oriental Studies Center at the Tartu, the conference featured reports by Estonian researchers Eiki Berg, Mart Rannut and Mart Laanemets as well as speeches by Estonian political figures Mart Laar, Mart Nutt ...
A Selection From the Cache of Diplomatic Dispatches
Dec. 2, 2010
Below are a selection of the documents from a cache of a quarter-million confidential American diplomatic cables that WikiLeaks intends to make public starting on Nov. 28. A small number of names and passages in some of the cables have been removed by The New York Times to protect diplomats’ confidential sources, to keep from compromising American intelligence efforts or to protect the privacy of ordinary citizens.
DATE2006-08-31 06:39:00
SOURCEEmbassy Moscow
CLASSIFICATIONCONFIDENTIAL
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 05 MOSCOW 009533
Classified By: Deputy Chief of Mission Daniel A. Russell. Reason 1.4 ( b, d)
Summary -------
1. (C) Weddings are elaborate in Dagestan, the largest autonomy in the North Caucasus. On August 22 we attended a wedding in Makhachkala, Dagestan's capital: Duma member and Dagestan Oil Company chief Gadzhi Makhachev's son married a classmate. The lavish display and heavy drinking concealed the deadly serious North Caucasus politics of land, ethnicity, clan, ...
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