Today's headlines speak of the bleak but sadly not unfamiliar news of another human rights activist being murdered in the North Caucasus.  On Sunday, businessman and rights defender Maksharip Aushev was killed when 60 rounds of bullets were sprayed into his car along a highway in the province of Kabardino-Balkaria.  Aushev is the third human rights activist to be murdered in the trouble spot in a little over three months, following the murder of Memorial's stalwart Natalya Estemirova in July and childrens' charity officer Zarema Sadulayeva and her husband in August. The Guardian adumbrates Aushev's trajectory into the sphere of human rights advocacy, prompted by the experience of his own son and nephew being kidnapped, followed by ...

Though Chechnya often gets the street cred, Ingushetia is a pretty rough place as well, and one of the most bloody war zones of the Caucasus.  Before his untimely death, the last article that lawyer Stanislav Markelov contributed to this blog was about the murder of journalist Magomed Yevloyev, and the lack of a legal opposition in Ingushetia.  Following Markelov's murder, throughout the first seven months of 2009 the situation has dramatically worsened.  On June 22nd, Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov was very nearly murdered in an assassination attempt (photo of Medvedev visiting him in the hospital).  Nameless dead bodies, supposedly of militants or government opponents, are regularly found in various hiding places.  On July 4th, nine Chechen ...

TODAY: Putin to stage early elections? Moscow newspaper editor in critical condition after being beaten; EU-Russia talks resume today amid Kremlin’s tensions with Ukraine and worries over NATO expansion; Gates critical of missile plans; Putin’s colourful language. A former Duma deputy slams the Kremlin’s ‘feckless budgetary policy’ and ponders the likelihood of Vladimir Putin staging early elections to lessen the possibility of social unrest stemming from the financial crisis. The Moscow Times has fixated on Dmitry Medvedev’s evasion of a question during his Le Figaro interview on whether or not he will step down early from the presidency. A criminal investigation has been launched after Mikhail Beketov, the editor of a small, Moscow-based opposition newspaper who has fought to protect Russian forestland, was beaten up outside ...

The following is a translation of an article which appeared last week in Spain's leading newspaper, El País, coinciding with the anniversary of the death of journalist Anna Politkovskaya. The original article can be read here. Russia’s Growing Impunity to Kill and Intimidate Journalists Pressures, boycotts, threats, torture and including death: this is what critical journalists in Russia expect. NGOs and experts criticize the silence of the West before this violation of human rights Juan Carlos Galindo, Madrid, Oct. 4, 2008 Magomed Yevloyev died in Ingushetia on August 31st after receiving a shot to the head while he was in police custody. Telman Alishayev, a broadcast reporter for Islamic TV in Dagestan, died one day later not very far from there, after being shot while in his car. On this same day, MIlosav Bitokov, editor of a weekly in ...

TODAY: Second journalist killed, another beaten up as police curb protests. Ukrainian government in turmoil over Russia. Georgia to receive almost $2 billion in US and IMF aid. Germany fears Russian influence; Lavrov in Poland. Putin says US agents provoked Georgia conflict. Gunmen in the Russian republic of Dagestan have shot and killed pro-Islam television journalist Abulla Alishayev, and in another Russian region, a newspaper editor was severely beaten. Police have been blocking the streets in Ingushetia to try and curb protests over the shooting of opposition leader Magomed Yevloyev. President Viktor Yushchenko has threatened to dissolve his Ukrainian government over a row with Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko regarding Russia’s invasion of Georgia. The latter has refrained from criticizing Russia directly. A new poll shows that the majority of Germans ...

TODAY: Medvedev says EU summit “double-edged”, calls Saakashvili a “political corpse”, and threatens to terminate WTO agreements; Putin warns of Russian response to Nato warships; Turkey plays down disagreements. Meet the minigarchs. President Dmitry Medvedev called the European Union’s emergency summit “double-edged”, criticizing it for threatening to postpone talks on a new cooperation agreement, but praising the decision not to impose economic sanctions. Medvedev says Russia will terminate some agreements “soon” if no headway is made towards its accession to the World Trade Organization. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has promised that Russia will respond - “calmly” - to the presence of Nato warships in the Black Sea. “Anybody who thinks Russia's confrontation with the West is another Cold War has been misled,” says Yulia Latynina. Francis Fukuyama writes in the Financial ...

Oleg Kozlovsky is a Russian civil society leader and organizer of the youth movement Oborona. From time to time, he contributes opinion articles to this blog. Below is his latest appeal to help a regional opposition leader who has come under attack from the state, which is especially important following the murder of Magomed Yevloyev on Sunday. I encourage everyone who is able to make a donation to help Mr. Soloviev. FSB: a Final Solution for Bloggers By Oleg Kozlovsky Dmitry Soloviev, a leader of the Oborona youth movement in Kemerovo region, faces criminal charges for criticizing the “siloviki” in a LiveJournal blog. He is accused by the regional prosecutor of posting information that "incites hatred, hostility and degrades a social group of people—the police and FSB”. According to the anti-extremist legislation introduced in 2006 (more specifically, the ...

What commentary can one really add to this reprehensible slaying of Kremlin-critic blogger Magomed Yevloyev? The return to the headlines of the crisis in Ingushetia, which the opposition claims involves an open policy of genocide by the Russian state, highlights exactly the types of ethnic internal separatist tensions of the Russian Federation made very problematic by the intervention in Georgia (the primary reason why the term "pandora's box" has been used so often in describing the invasion). Yesterday a report was published on the writer's website, Ingushetia.ru (which has a long history of publishing reports critical of government policy in the Caucasus) stating that Yevloyev died Sunday after a police car picked him up from an airport in the Ingushetia province and then dumped him on the road with a gunshot wound in the head. Today, more than 1,200 ...