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YEREVAN -- Two leaders of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation party (Dashnaktsutyun) have criticized Russian policy toward Turkey and Azerbaijan, RFE/RL's Armenian Service reports. Vahan Hovannisian, a senior Dashnaktsutyun lawyer, said that Russian policy toward the South Caucasus is "dangerous" for Armenia. Hovannisian did not elaborate on his statement. Another Dashnaktsutyun leader, Hrayr Karapetian, who heads the parliament's defense and security committee, said Russia's deepening military cooperation with Turkey and Azerbaijan runs counter to its military alliance with Armenia. Karapetian said a 2010 plan for joint military exercises signed by Azerbaijani and Russian defense ministers is "at the least, strange and...

In the Caucasus Mountains along Russia's southern fringe, a hidden war is escalating. Moscow says it's battling militant Islam in the tiny republic of Ingushetia. But people here say hundreds of innocent civilians are being tortured and murdered. REPORTER: He says, "We can no longer walk. "Our teeth have been broken, our jaws are broken. "We desperately need some help." They say they live in terror of a Russian security apparatus out of control. We arrived in Nazran, the largest town in the mainly Muslim Russian Republic of Ingushetia. We were taken to a house, where we were met by...

HILLARY CLINTON’S words of support for Georgia during her visit this week to Moscow did little to calm fears in Tbilisi about Russia’s intentions in the turbulent Caucasus mountains. Two of Russia’s most powerful men sent shivers through Tbilisi during the US secretary of state’s stay in Moscow, with statements that fuelled worries the Kremlin’s fight with rebels in its own restive Caucasus republics could spill into neighbouring Georgia. The struggle between Moscow’s security forces and militants, once confined to Chechnya, is equally intense in two other Russian regions, Dagestan and Ingushetia, where police and soldiers come under daily attack...

A recent report of an ancient textile facility, of sorts, is turning heads.[1] Sifting through the debris on a cave floor in the Republic of Georgia, scientists recently discovered evidence that the early cave dwellers processed textiles in the cave. While searching for ancient pollen grains, they found tiny flax fibers in the dirt. Some of these fibers were woven, some were cut, and some were dyed black, gray, turquoise, or pink. They also discovered evidence that these people were processing fur (for clothing) and animal hides. What is surprising about the find is that this was supposedly happening 30,000...

CAIRO, Sept 2 (Reuters) - Ankara will pressure Tbilisi to overturn a Georgian court decision to imprison a Turkish tanker captain for trying to deliver fuel to rebel Abkhazia, violating an economic blockade, a government source said on Wednesday. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is expected to visit Tbilisi to ask Georgia to overturn the decision to jail the captain for 24 years after his ship was seized in the Black Sea by the Georgian Coast Guard. Georgian authorities say the ship was seized in Georgian waters, but the tanker operator says the vessel was seized in international waters at gunpoint....

One of the biggest myths perpetuated by Vladimir Putin's propaganda machine is that during his 10-year rule over Russia, the former president and current prime minister succeeded in "pacifying" the North Caucasus. Nothing could be further from the truth. What we are witnessing today is the start of the third Caucasus war in 15 years, following the two Chechen wars of 1994 and 1999. There was the June 22 attack on Ingushetia's president Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the recent murders of Chechen human rights activists Natalia Estemirova and Zarema Sadulaeva, and last week's terrorist attack in Nazran, which killed scores and maimed...

Moscow (AsiaNews / Agencies) – The Russian Islamic University, inaugurated in Grozny, on August 21 is called Kunta-Haji, in honor the Sufi mystic who in the mid nineteenth century preached non-violence in Chechnya. The ceremony was opened by a video message in which Vladimir Putin, the Russian premier said: "There are three million Muslims in our country and they all consider Russia as their home, their mother country and we welcome the recovery Islamic traditions". The words of the Prime Minister in Moscow echoed those of Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya's president, who announced a future for the country without the influence...

Vienna, August 18 – Ingushetia President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov says that the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel are behind efforts to destabilize the North Caucasus but that they will not succeed and that region will remain part of the Russian Federation for more than the next 100 years. In an interview published in yesterday’s “Komsomolskaya Pravda,” Yevkurov, who has just been released from a Moscow hospital following a June 22 assassination attempt against him, made a number of comments which provide clues as to the approach he is likely to pursue now that he has returned to work (www.kp.ru/daily/24343.5/534268/)....

SUKHUMI, August 18 (RIA Novosti) - The Abkhazian president appealed to the UN Security Council and the European Union on Tuesday over the seizure by Georgia of a Turkish tanker carrying fuel to the former Georgian republic. "On August 16, 2009, Georgian patrol officers seized a commercial vessel en route from Turkey to Abkhazia again. This was the third incident of Georgian piracy this year," Sergei Bagapsh said in a statement. The Turkish Buket vessel was delivering over 3,000 metric tons of gasoline and 775 metric tons of diesel to Abkhazia, when the incident occurred. Tbilisi, which considers Abkhazia to...

Note: The following blog entry is a quote: Speaker At Hizb Al-Tahrir Conference In Lebanon Calls For Jihad In Cyprus, Balkans, Caucasus At the annual conference of the Islamist organization Hizb Al-Tahrir in Lebanon, on the subject of jihad, organization member Sheikh Adnan Mizyan said yesterday that in light of the fact that many countries of Muslims are today under occupation, including Palestine, Iraq, Cyprus, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Afghanistan, and Kashmir, the Islamic ummah must take jihad measures in order to free them. Source: Al-Safir, Lebanon, July 20, 2009 Posted at: 2009-07-20

One of the last acts of Natalia Estemirova, the human rights activist who was abducted and found murdered on Wednesday in Ingushetia, was to document the killing of a Chechen villager shot for allegedly giving a sheep to rebels. These two murders add to a fresh surge of violence across RussiaÂ’s north Caucasus, which is setting off a powder keg of Islamic extremism, top-level vested interest, interclan rivalry, traditions of vengeance and ingrained suspicion of the behaviour of human rights activists. The stability of the region is deteriorating, nearly a year after Russia attacked Georgia over the breakaway republics of...

After visiting breakaway South Ossetia on July 13 and Russian troops based deep inside Georgia, President Dmitry Medvedev traveled to Novorossiysk to inspect Russia's main deepwater Black Sea port and nearby military facilities. Medvedev visited the Black Sea fleet flagship cruiser Moskva, attended a meeting of the military top brass and inspected troops in the 7th airborne (VDV) division based in Novorossiysk (RIA Novosti, July 14). Russian President Dmitry Medvedev talks to 7-th Airborne Assault Division soldiers at the Rayevsky firing range in Novorossiysk on July 14, 2009 In South Ossetia Medvedev visited the Russian military HQ and base in...

MOSCOW -- Undeterred by the global slowdown, Russia's state-run energy leviathan Gazprom has pushed ahead with an expansion masterplan of huge ambition that has raised questions over its true motives. Gazprom chief executive Alexei Miller has warned Europe — keen to break Russia's stronghold on gas supplies — against turning the issue of energy diversification into a “fetish.” But analysts say it is the Russian gas giant's own actions that are now bordering on the abnormal, with deals often being motivated by factors like politics or pride rather than economic sense. “Gazprom has acquired the function of the foreign energy...

I'll be on hiatus into July after this. So I looked for some waterfall pictures as a send-off. Waterfall in the Caucasus Mountains (Chegem Gorge). Click for full-size. Katibawasan Falls, Phillipines (click for full size) El Chorro waterfalls, El Salvador

MOSCOW - Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov said he had been ordered by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to fight insurgents in the neighboring region of Ingushetia after its leader was gravely wounded in a bomb attack. Kadyrov's harsh tactics have brought relative stability to Chechnya since he was elected in 2007 after more than a decade of war. But fellow Kremlin appointees have failed to stem spikes in violence in neighboring Dagestan and Ingushetia. With Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov fighting for his life in hospital, Kadyrov said he had been ordered by Medvedev to run cross-border operations. "He told me to...

NAZRAN, Russia -- Gunmen killed a former top government minister in Ingushetia as he stood outside his home in the violent southern Russian region Saturday, law enforcement officials said. .... Two gunmen sprayed Aushev with automatic weapon fire as he got out of his car at the gate outside his home in the region's main city, Nazran, around 6:30 p.m. (1430 GMT), the regional Interior Ministry's press service said. He died en route to the hospital. Aushev was vice premier under former Ingush President Murat Zyazikov, a KGB agent who was widely reviled by many Ingush for his repressive policies....

The deputy head of Ingushetia's Supreme Court has been shot dead in the latest incident of violence to hit Russia's troubled Caucasus region. The assassination of Justice Aza Gazgireeva follows a recent high profile killing in neighboring Dagestan, where Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has warned that poverty, unemployment, and massive corruption are undermining government authority. Deputy Chief Justice of Ingushetia's Supreme Court, Aza Gazgireeva, was killed after gunmen opened fire on her chauffer-driven van in the republic's biggest city, Nazran. Russian TV reports say one of the assassin's then walked up to Gazgireeva's body and shot her in the head....

The head of the interior ministry in Russia's turbulent Dagestan region was on Friday shot dead by a sniper while leaving a wedding party, investigators said. The head of the ministry's logistics unit was also killed in the attack and a third officer was injured, the investigative committee of the Russian prosecutor general's office said in a statement. Hospital officials said a fourth officer was also seriously injured. The minister, Lieutenant General Adilgerei Magomedtagirov, died when a sniper opened fire from a building overlooking a restaurant where he was attending the wedding of a colleague's daughter. The bride's father was...

Russia is concerned over Armenia’s participation in NATO military trainings in Georgia, especially, considering the anti-Russian nature of trainings planned, RF MP Semen Baghdasarov said at TV space bridge entitled “Armenia-Turkey: Progress in bilateral relations or geopolitical games of world powers?”. “As CSTO member, and military and strategic partner of Russia, Armenia has to refuse from participating in these trainings, like a number of other post soviet countries did,” RF MP noted. According to him, Armenia has to remember that the West has never supported Armenian people’s interests. “A search for new allies is in process in Armenia, and Russia...

Seven Georgian monastics were forced to leave the territory of Abkhazia by separatist forces on April 2-3. Representatives of the breakaway region had accused them of “politicking.” The three monks and four nuns were from the Saint Giorgi Monastery in the village of Azhara, located in the Kodori Gorge, the only part of Abkhazia that was controlled by the central Georgian Government before the August Russian-Georgian conflict. When Georgian troops were driven out of the area the monastery and its residents stayed. “[After the August conflict] we proposed to the Georgian ‘priests’ that they accept the regulations of the Abkhazian...

Vladimir Radchenko’s first day on the job as acting chief tax inspector for Dagestan, a region in southern Russia, did not go smoothly. As he stepped into the office on February 6, he was confronted by the son of the president of the autonomous republic, escorted from the building by two men with pistols, stuffed into a car, driven around the capital city for an hour and threatened with death if he ever set foot in the region again. And that was just the start of a very bad week. A lesser bureaucrat, faced with the same, would likely have...

MAKHACHKALA, Russia (AP) - Security forces battled gunmen holed up in a mountainous forest east of Chechnya for a second day Friday and at least five officers were killed, regional officials said. An unknown number of militants were also killed. The fighting in the southern districts of Dagestan was some of the fiercest to hit the poor, volatile North Caucasus republic in years. State-run TV showed dozens of members of the security forces and vehicles perched on hillsides outside the Karabudakhkentsky district village of Kakashura. Helicopter gunships were shown firing missiles into a forest where police said between 10 and...

Analysts say Islamist extremists have infiltrated the region and that worsening poverty may drive people towards the rebels who have previously sent kidnappers and suicide bombers to attack Russian cities. Financial support is a tool for the Kremlin to dampen support for the rebels but Russia's cash reserves have shrunk by some 40 percent to about $385 billion (270 billion pounds) since last summer. In Russia's original budget for 2009, Chechnya's government said it had been promised around 24.5 billion roubles (474 million pounds) -- worth about $1 billion before the currency devalued by about a third. The other North...

Officials in the restive Russian republic of Ingushetia say four police and three insurgents have died in a clash in the republic's principal city. The clash in Nazran ended when the house where the rebels were holed up exploded, a blast apparently set off by the fighters. The regional Interior Ministry says the four police were killed in gunfire Thursday with the insurgents and that one of the insurgents died in the crossfire. The bodies of two other fighters were found in the rubble of the exploded house, according to Russian news reports citing ministry officials.

The air force chief of Azerbaijan, an oil producing state in the fragile southern Caucasus region, was shot dead outside his home on Wednesday, officials said. General-Lieutenant Rail Rzayev was the most senior official to have been killed in ex-Soviet Azerbaijan, a country where Russia and the United States vie for influence, since the 1990s. It was not immediately clear whether the motives for the killing were political. "At approximately 8 a.m. (0400 GMT) at the entrance to his home the head of the air force and missile defense system was shot in the head and later died of his...

A decade ago, Western and Israeli leaders could count on Turkey as an ally. A solid NATO member, Ankara took decisions based on pragmatic calculations of interest - and erred on the side of caution if at all. But under the rule of the Islamic conservative AKP, this has changed. In the face of Hamas rockets, Israel could have expected more understanding from a country long suffering from aggressive PKK terrorism. The vehemence with which Turkish leaders attacked Israel, and their apparent willingness to convey Hamas' position to the United Nations, came as a surprise to many. Some of this...

NAZRAN, Russia (Reuters) - An explosion in the southern Russian region of Ingushetia destroyed a government office in the main town of Nazran on Tuesday, killing eight people and injuring another 22, officials said. An official from the Ingush prosecutor's office said a gas leak was the likely cause of the blast, but added that this had yet to be confirmed. "The total number of people recovered from under the rubble is 30, eight of them dead," a spokeswoman for the regional Emergency Services Ministry said in Nazran. At least 17 people were rushed to hospital, while others with lighter...

A former mayor of Vladikavkaz, in Russia's troubled North Caucasus, has been shot dead in his car, police say. Kazbek Pagiyev's car came under a hail of bullets, killing him and his driver, in Vladikavkaz, the capital of Russia's republic of North Ossetia. Mr Pagiyev stood down as deputy prime minister in North Ossetia last week, Russian news agencies report. He served as mayor until December 2007, when he was replaced by Vitaly Karayev, who was killed by a gunman last month. Mr Pagiyev had been mayor for five years in North Ossetia, which lies near Chechnya, and has been...

MOSCOW, Dec 29 (Reuters) - A senior Russian officer was fatally wounded when his car came under fire in the Dagestan region of southern Russia on Monday, Russian news agencies reported. Major General Valery Lipinsky, deputy commander of the North Caucasus arm of Russia's Interior Ministry forces, died in hospital from chest wounds, Interfax news agency quoted an official in the local prosecutor's office as saying. Lipinsky was travelling through the regional capital of Makhachkala when it came under fire, the RIA agency reported. Gun and bomb attacks in Russia's Northern Caucasus regions are common, although they rarely result in...

MOSCOW - Russia's top military officer warned that Moscow felt threatened by U.S. policy in ex-Soviet Central Asia and claimed that Washington was attempting to establish new military bases there, news agencies reported Tuesday. Gen. Nikolai Makarov, the chief of the Russian military's general staff, said Washington planned to establish a foothold in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, Interfax and ITAR-Tass reported. U.S. officials denied there were plans. Makarov also said U.S. support for bids by Georgia and Ukraine to join NATO made Russia feel threatened. He cast doubt that relations between the countries would improve under Barack Obama. "According to our...

Perhaps hoping to emulate the devil's imputed success in convincing much of humanity that he does not exist, Russian propagandists have taken great pains over the past several years to persuade the world that the war in Chechnya is over, and the region is on the fast track to stability and prosperity. No effort has been spared in ensuring that the Russian spin on the situation is heard loud and clear and remains unchallenged. Even with official accreditation, no foreign journalist is allowed to travel within Chechnya unchaperoned. Vast swathes of the republic still remain off-limits to outside observers. Human...

GROZNY, Russia (Reuters) - Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov opened one of Europe's biggest mosques in the rebuilt capital of the southern Russian region Friday, saying it was proof Russian rule and Islam can go together. The mosque, named "The Heart of Chechnya" and constructed by Turkish builders, can host up to 10,000 worshippers. Its minarets rise as high as 62 m (200 ft) and the complex extends over 14 hectares (35 acres), including a vast garden. "With the start of the Chechen war, the enemies of Islam and foes of Russia alleged that Russia wages war against Islam and the...

LETTER FROM MOSCOW The war in Georgia has provoked unprecedented levels of patriosm in Russia. The majority of the population supported their army's actions in the Caucasus. And even the fiercest critics of the Kremlin have now become proud Russians. REUTERS Members of the Kremlin-loyal youth organisation "Nashi" wave flags and hold a banner during a protest in front of the US embassy in Moscow during the Georgia war. I never thought I’d see the day when regular Russians, without any prompting, would voluntarily and passionately defend the actions of the Kremlin in conversations with a foreign friend. But at...

MOSCOW: A car bomb in the capital of South Ossetia on Friday killed nine Russian peacekeepers and wounded three others, raising tensions in the separatist enclave days before a scheduled pullback of Russian troops from Georgian territory. President Eduard Kokoity of South Ossetia said he had "no doubt" that Georgian special forces were behind the explosion in the capital, Tskhinvali. The acts, he said, "undermine international efforts to stabilize the situation and torpedo the Medvedev-Sarkozy plan." The blast came six days before a deadline for Russia to pull back from the so-called buffer zone outside South Ossetia, yielding a large...

ROSTOV-ON-DON, October 2 (RIA Novosti) - Two soldiers were killed and three injured in separate attacks by militants in Russia's North Caucasus republic of Ingushetia on Thursday, the local Interior Ministry said. A ministry spokesman told RIA Novosti said that unknown assailants had opened fire on ministry troops who were in a Lada car on the Caucasus highway near Ingushetia's largest city, Nazran. Two soldiers were killed and one was wounded in the attack. In a separate incident, a motorized column of military servicemen was involved in a road accident near Nazran. When soldiers left their vehicles, militants opened fire...

Armenia hosted on Monday the first NATO-led military exercises in the South Caucasus since the recent Russian-Georgian war, underlining its intention to continue to deepen security ties with the West despite the latter’s confrontation with Russia. About one thousand troops from 17 nations, eight of them NATO members, will practice in the next three weeks joint military and humanitarian operations at the training ground of Armenia’s main military academy located on the northern outskirts of Yerevan. An opening ceremony there was led by Defense Minister Seyran Ohanian and Lieutenant General John Gardner, the U.S. deputy commander of NATO’s Land Component...

Having devastated vast areas of its own lands in the Caucasus, such as Chechnya and Ingushetia, in order to "protect" them from instability, Moscow's obliterating shadow has settled deep over Georgia -- with the usual consequences. The full barbarism of Russian actions in Georgia may not emerge for years; much of the evidence lies behind the lines in terrain newly annexed by Russia. But some details are now beyond dispute. Alongside the various human atrocities, such as the bombing and purging of civilian areas, the invaders looted and destroyed numerous historical sites, some of which were profoundly revered by the...

GUDERMES, Russia (Reuters) - A Chechen warlord on Thursday accused the Russian region's pro-Kremlin leader of killing his brother and vowed to take revenge, pitching the two most powerful men in Chechnya against each other. Chechnya's pro-Kremlin leader Ramzan Kadyrov denied any role in the shooting. About 70 to 80 men -- mainly family members and loyal fighters -- attended the funeral of Ruslan Yamadayev in the town of Gudermes east of the Chechen capital Grozny. Gunmen killed the former parliamentary deputy as he drove through the center of Moscow Wednesday evening. "I accuse Ramzan Kadyrov of the murder of...

MOSCOW, September 23 (RIA Novosti) - Three people have been found dead in Ingushetia, while in separate attacks another two were wounded and the deputy interior minister's official car was blown up, law enforcement sources said Tuesday. The incidents all occurred in the Russian North Caucasus republic late Monday, when one soldier was also injured in a grenade attack in neighboring Chechnya The latest took place at approximately 23:47 Moscow time (19:47 GMT) when unknown people fired a grenade at an Interior Ministry arms store in Ingushetia's largest city, Nazran, injuring two servicemen. At around 20:30 Moscow time (16:30 GMT)...

MOSCOW — A Russian archaeologist says he has found the lost capital of the Khazars, a powerful nation that adopted Judaism as its official religion more than 1,000 years ago, only to disappear leaving little trace of its culture. Dmitry Vasilyev, a professor at Astrakhan State University, said his nine-year excavation near the Caspian Sea has finally unearthed the foundations of a triangular fortress of flamed brick, along with modest yurt-shaped dwellings, and he believes these are part of what was once Itil, the Khazar capital. (edit) The Khazars were a Turkic tribe that roamed the steppes from Northern China...

Grozny, which I last saw as an immense heap of rubble, is now a truly impressive sight, with fine modern apartment blocks and a beautiful Turkish-built mosque, modeled on the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, towering over the main square. Grozny as it now stands is a vast improvement on the city as it stood before the war of 1994, when it was a dirty, run-down Soviet industrial city with grim, shabby architecture, very few amenities—and no visible mosques at all. ... It may, however, have been a help in the reconstruction that the current population of 228,000 is less than...

MOSCOW, September 18 (RIA Novosti) - A soldier was killed and two others injured when gunmen opened fire with automatic weapons on their vehicle near the capital of the North Caucasus republic of Chechnya, a health official said on Thursday. According to the source, the soldiers, members of the Defense Ministry's Zapad (West) battalion, were traveling in a Mitsubishi vehicle when the shots were fired at around 10:30 p.m. local time on Wednesday. As a result of the shooting, one soldier died, while the unit commander and another serviceman were injured. In a separate incident in neighboring Daghestan's capital, five...

Stockholm - The recent war between Russia and Georgia would have 'profound consequences' on international relations, according to the Swedish Defence Research Agency. 'The Russian actions were the result of deliberate and premeditated choices,' researcher Robert Larsson said, noting Russia's decision to enter the conflict, and to use a 'relatively large portion of violence' and then to recognize breakaway regions in Georgia. Larsson made his remarks at the launch of a 153-page study titled 'The Caucasian Litmus Test: Consequences and Lessons of the Russian- Georgian War in August 2008.' Larsson, editor and one of 14 contributors to the study, said...

Four Russian soldiers have been shot dead in the southern region of Ingushetia, Russian news agencies reported, in the latest attack on federal forces in the increasingly unstable North Caucasus republic. The bodies of the four interior ministry servicemen were found with gunshot wounds by an armed patrol near the village of Galashki on Wednesday afternoon, Vasily Panchenkov, the aide to Russia's interior troops commander, told Interfax news agency. A source in the investigative department of the Ingush prosecutor's office told Interfax later that the soldiers had probably been shot from a nearby forest. Another four servicemen and three gunmen...

A visit to Georgia by senior Nato officials this week was anti-Russian and showed the alliance is driven by Cold War-style thinking, Russia's Foreign Ministry said today. "Decisions taken ... confirmed that in Nato, the Cold War-era reflexes of 'them and us' are at work once again," a statement said. "We cannot view steps to intensify relations between the alliance and Georgia any other way than as encouragement for new adventures ... We believe the alliance's session in Tbilisi in the current conditions was not timely and does not help stabilisation in the region." The statement said the visit showed...

The West Begins to Doubt Georgian Leader Five weeks after the war in the Caucasus the mood is shifting against Georgian President Saakashvili. Some Western intelligence reports have undermined Tbilisi's version of events and there are now calls on both sides of the Atlantic for an independent investigation. But now, five weeks after the end of the war in the Caucasus, the winds have shifted in America. Even Washington is beginning to suspect that Saakashvili, a friend and ally, could in fact be a gambler -- someone who triggered the bloody five-day war and then told the West bold-faced lies....

Georgia produced telephone intercepts on Tuesday it said proved Russian armour entered Georgia hours before the start of a Georgian attack that Moscow said forced it to send in its troops. The release of the intercepts comes as both Moscow and Tbilisi wage a diplomatic and public relations campaign to prove the other side fired the first shot in a war that killed hundreds of people and caused widespread devastation. Russia said the evidence was "not serious". The force movements referred to in the intercepts may, it said, have been a routine rotation by Russian peacekeeping forces already operating in...

Georgia has released intercepted telephone calls purporting to show that part of a Russian armored regiment crossed into the separatist enclave of South Ossetia nearly a full day before Georgia’s attack on the capital, Tskhinvali, late on Aug. 7. ... The back and forth over who started the war is already an issue in the American presidential race, with Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, the Republican vice presidential candidate, contending that Russia’s incursion into Georgia was “unprovoked,” while others argue that Georgia’s shelling of Tskhinvali was provocation. Georgia claims that its main evidence — two of several calls secretly recorded...

ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia: Militants battled security forces in Ingushetia, killing four security officers as rising violence threatens to further destabilize the troubled southern Russian region, officials said Monday. Sunday's gunbattle also killed two militants and left eight officers wounded, the Ingush Interior Ministry said. The Interfax news agency, meanwhile, reported that that the deputy chief of regional Federal Security Service was killed in the operation.

MOSCOW, September 14 (RIA Novosti) - The president of Russia's North Caucasus republic of Chechnya has said that a street in the capital Grozny will be named after an ex-commander killed in Sunday's plane crash in the Urals. Gennady Troshev, 61, a former commander of the North Caucasus Military District, was one of the 88 people killed in the Boeing-737-500 crash outside Perm. He had received a Hero of Russia award for his service. Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov's announcement was quoted by TV channel Vesti. Troshev commanded federal forces during the 1994-1996 First Chechen War, and became the top commander...