Great Decisions 2011 Fall Updates: The Caucasus
The main suspect in the 2006 murder of Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian investigative journalist who wrote about human rights abuses and corruption, was detained on May 31 in Chechnya. Rustam Makhmudov is accused of shooting Politkovskaya in her Moscow apartment building. Three other associates had been tried and acquitted for their involvement in the murder while Makhmudov remained at large.
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Violence has flared up in Chechyna this year, as Russian security forces killed 7 suspected militants in Chechnya on August 17. In July, Russian authorities made a spate of arrests in connection with a foiled Moscow terror attack. The suspects all originated from the North Caucasus, a region that has grown increasingly restive.
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Yuri Budanov, a former Russian tank commander infamous for abducting, torturing and murdering Elza Kungayeva, a Chechen teenager, in 2000 during Russia’s “dirty war” in Chechnya, was gunned down on June 10 in Moscow. Budanov’s crime, which occurred in a village in Ingushetia as the Russian army swept into the region, was a notorious symbol of Russian abuses in Chechnya. Budanov had been tried and acquitted for murder in 2002, but was convicted the next year after a new trial was ordered. He had been paroled in 2009.
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Meanwhile, talks about the future of Nagorno-Karabakh have remained deadlocked, despite efforts from international mediators from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Minsk Group, which includes the U.S. and Russia. In Nagorno-Karabakh, military officers are reporting a buildup of forces on the Armenian-backed side. In July, Armenia announced plans to conduct joint military drills with the U.S. in 2012 or 2013, despite Armenia’s close ties to Russia. Azerbaijan also plans to increase its military spending by more than 50 percent, to $3.3 billion from $2.15 billion.
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On July 7, Georgia detained five photojournalists, including the personal photographer of President Mikheil Saakashvili, on espionage charges. In protest, several Georgian newspapers printed blank front pages, as members of the media and the opposition believe that several of the detained men—who initially insisted upon their innocence— were coerced into confessing. Deep suspicion about Russian infiltration runs rampant in Georgia, and the incident met a baffling resolution, with all of the photojournalists pleading guilty and receiving conditional sentences with little explanation.
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Two days before the third anniversary of the Russo-Georgian war, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev publicly remarked that the U.S. had been involved in the events leading up to the war, which flared up for five days beginning on August 7, 2008, and divested Georgia of its influence in the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The conflict was a flash point for the U.S.; just a few days before Medvedev’s remarks, the Senate passed a resolution in support of Georgia.
The U.S. and Russia have been trading barbs throughout the summer, despite the much-lauded “reset” of relations following the new START treaty. In July, a top Georgian intelligence official stated that a bombing near the U.S. embassy in Tbilisi on September 22, 2010, had been planned by Maj. Yevgeny Borisov, a member of Russian intelligence. A U.S. intelligence report released shortly thereafter was unable to conclusively assign blame to Borisov.
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On August 12, Human Rights Watch called for the Azerbaijani government to investigate the illegal destruction of a building that housed three human rights groups. The UN and the EU also condemned the demolition. Azerbaijan has come under fire for its treatment of activists.