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extremism

Kabardino-Balkaria’s commission on former militants — handcuffed by police ambitions?

by Volodymyr Soboliev

•6 min read

The Commission on adaptation of militants coming back from Syria to peaceful life has functioned in Kabardino-Balkaria for over 6 years. Despite its mandate to reintegrate former militants into society, a number of high-profile prosecutions has raised doubts over the authorities’ true commitment to peacefully returning them to civilian life. Islam Gugov left for Syria in September 2014. He joined Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar, a militant group at the time connected to the jihadist underg

Feature Stories

‘Environmental concerns’ mask a lack of funds to reanimate Kabardino-Balkaria’s erstwhile heavy industry

by Askar Shogenov

•6 min read

Authorities in Kabardino-Balkaria have been promoting ambitious plans to kickstart the republic’s industry with a new hydrometallurgical plant. But for ‘environmental reasons’, and supposed archaeological discoveries at the site, the plans — the estimated cost of which had began to spiral — may now be permanently on ice. The Russian government has made claims that Western sanctions are reinvigorating the country’s industry, but several plans for the reconstruction and creation of new pla

censorship

Kabardino-Balkaria’s code of silence

by Volodymyr Soboliev

•7 min read

The media in Kabardino-Balkaria parrots an extremely rosy picture of the republic. However, journalists and activists almost all admit privately — that with an eye towards the Kremlin (and Kadyrov’s growing army next door in Chechnya) — freedom of speech has been utterly decimated, and controversial topics go completely unreported. Of the two or three independent print media outlets that appeared in Kabardino-Balkaria on the wave of democratisation more than 20 years ago, only Gazeta Yug

addiction

Nalchik’s Baptist drug counselors

by Volodymyr Soboliev

•6 min read

Around 1,000 Christian Baptists live in majority Muslim Kabardino-Balkaria. One member of the community, Chechen man Ruslan Osmanov, told OC Media about how his new-found religion helped him to find his place and to break with a life of crime and addiction. I was invited to the meeting of The Good News, a Christian Evangelical community in Nalchik, by their leader Ruslan Osmanov. It was an ordinary Baptist meeting. At first, people gathered in a small room, sang religious songs with a gu