Caucasus

Who even knows anymore?

by Michael Hancock-Parmer

Here’s a little wrap up of Caucasian mayhem. Sadly, the list of murdered journalists on Registan has a new member, as mentioned in the comments. Magomed Yevloyev [Магомед Евлоев] was a journalist, blogger, and owner of Ingushetiya.ru. Earlier this summer his site was shut down by court order for “extremism,” which equates to being in [...]

1 comment Read the full article →

How Georgia Turns

by Joshua Foust

An armed clash in South Ossetia has raised tensions region-wide: Accounts of the number killed and injured vary. South Ossetia claims six civilians killed and 22 injured after Georgian forces reportedly fired on and later shelled the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, during the night of August 1-2. Tbilisi, for its part, claims that six civilians [...]

4 comments Read the full article →

Angling for an Independence

by Joshua Foust

The CS Monitor carries an interesting dispatch from Abkhazia, which is apparently turning into a hub for Russian tourism: Butba has already restored one luxury hotel on Sukhumi’s fabled sea front and he has another hotel under reconstruction. “The way forward is to show the world that we can rebuild this country,” he says, “and [...]

2 comments Read the full article →

Checking in with the Georgians and Russians with the help of Robert Frost

by Michael Hancock-Parmer

I don’t know how many erstwhile English majors and poetry gurus read these posts, but the recent editorials and articles covering the Georgia/Russia border debacle put me in mind of one of Robert Frost’s longer, less well-known poems, “Mending Wall.” I’ll quote a couple lines – you can find the whole thing here. Something there [...]

5 comments Read the full article →

Freedom of the Press in Azerbaijan

by Marc W

I skimmed the Caucasus news today, and there are still several stories about Putin’s opposition to NATO enlargement (such as this one), but this one about an imprisoned Azeri journalist caught my eye. Eynulla Fatullayev, the editor-in-chief of the Gundalik Azerbaijan and Realniy Azerbaijan , has been in jail since 2004 for various charges. He [...]

Read the full article →

Hey, it’s that Caucasus Guy!

by Marc W

I’m back from a couple of weeks in England and Ireland. I have to say, I didn’t follow the news too much about the Caucasus. I did catch a decent amount of BBC, but their international coverage was primarily confined to Tibet and Zimbabwe. I did, however, have an interesting in-flight magazine on BMI. All [...]

Read the full article →

Hey look, more protests!

by Marc W

Sigh. This time in Georgia. 7,000 in Tibilisi against Saakashvili for allegedly stealing the presidental election back in January. The protestors are mostly supporters of Levan Gachechiladze, who was the runner-up in the election. The election was very similar to the Armenian election last month, in that I don’t think anyone really disputes that Saakashvili [...]

Read the full article →

What about Georgia?

by Marc W

Yesterday I spent a lot of time researching Armenia and finding a couple of cool Armenia-related blogs, including a few reporters and bloggers who kindly offered to answer some of my questions. That said, right now I want to mix things up a bit and check out another Caucasian country: Georgia. It turns out that [...]

7 comments Read the full article →

Karabakh Update

by Marc W

The conflict in Nagorno Karabakh is all over the news today (do a quick google news search and you’ll see what I mean), so I’m just going to post a bunch of quick links. Before I do, I want to clarify a point in my previous post. As an astute reader pointed out (thanks Ari), [...]

14 comments Read the full article →

After the Wrecking Ships

by Joshua Foust

Almost as if God Herself were out to show why pipelines that bypass the Bosporus are necessary, a major storm in the Black Sea sank four ships and an oil tanker. The tanker, which sank in 5-meter seas, was just off the coast of Kerch, a Ukrainian port almost equidistant between Sevastopol, Ukraine and Krasnodar, [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →