Introduction
The last two weeks of July were relatively calm in the North Caucasus. There were no major Ukrainian drone strikes or significant damage reported during this period. Circassian activists continue to face pressure from local law enforcement, while a new campaign against witchcraft and occultism has emerged in Ingushetia. Here are the main developments from those two weeks.
Adyghea
Adyghe State University conducted a survey among university students examining their attitudes towards family formation. The project was supervised by university researchers Zaur Khachetsukov and Vyacheslav Nekhay. Approximately 200 students participated in the survey. According to the findings, 45% of respondents considered a family with two children to be ideal, while 15% preferred three children and 5% favoured four or more. The survey also explored the main obstacles to having families with three or more children. Most respondents identified a lack of adequate housing and unemployment as the principal barriers. 69% of those surveyed expressed a negative view towards abortion.
Unlike most other North Caucasian republics, Adygea has been experiencing a relatively low fertility rate. In 2025, the republic’s total fertility rate stood at 1.37, well below the replacement level. Furthermore, ethnic Circassians constitute a minority among the republic’s population, while ethnic Russians form the majority. Owing to its developing tourism sector and its proximity to Krasnodar, a major economic centre in southern Russia, Adygea has also attracted migrants from other parts of the country, further reducing the proportion of the ethnic Circassian population.
Karachaevo-Cherkesia
Former senator from Karachaevo-Cherkessia Rauf Arashukov, who is serving a life sentence in one of Russia’s strictest prisons, Black Dolphin, has begun a hunger strike to highlight poor conditions in the prison. Earlier this year, his request to be transferred to a correctional colony in the Republic of Mordovia was denied.
Rauf Arashukov’s case is an example of the struggle between competing clans in the ethnic republics of the North Caucasus. The once-powerful Circassian clan associated with Arashukov has been largely dismantled, and now has little influence in Karachaevo-Cherkesia. Arashukov has attempted to use various legal avenues to ease his sentence and improve his conditions in prison, but so far without success.
Kabardino-Balkaria
A repatriated Circassian in Nalchik has reported receiving threats from law enforcement following the disappearance of his son. Khalid Karaf, an ethnic Circassian from Syria who repatriated to Kabardino-Balkaria, said that his 30-year-old son, Nurdin, has been missing for more than six months. All attempts to locate him have so far produced no results. According to Karaf, he recently received a phone call from an unidentified person speaking Circassian, who warned that if he continued to speak publicly about the case, he and his son would be drafted to fight in Ukraine. Later, Karaf and his wife were summoned for questioning at a local FSB office, where they were reportedly told that their son was dead.
Pressure against repatriated Circassians in Kabardino-Balkaria and Adygea is a frequent occurrence. Russian authorities have imposed unofficial bureaucratic obstacles aimed at preventing the large-scale repatriation of Circassians from Turkey, Syria, and Jordan. There have also been multiple reported cases of Circassians from the diaspora being deported from Russia or denied entry. To date, the only successful case of large-scale repatriation to Circassia was the resettlement of Circassians from Kosovo in the 1990s, who now reside in the village of Mafekhabl in the Republic of Adygea.
North Ossetia
Prominent Russian journalist Ksenia Sobchak complained to the authorities of North Ossetia about the activities of the group Kavkazskaya Obshchyna (Caucasian Community). A Telegram channel published the contact details of Caucasian women whom its administrators accused of having violated or insulted Caucasian traditions. One of the most prominent cases involved a young woman from North Ossetia who posted a video of herself dancing while wearing a T-shirt without a bra. The Telegram channel demanded a public apology from the woman and her family for allegedly insulting Caucasian traditions. The Telegram channel was subsequently taken down, and several of its administrators were arrested. The head of North Ossetia, Sergey Menyaylo, also stated that the situation was under control and that all perpetrators would be punished in accordance with the law.
Such intimidation campaigns against North Caucasian women over their dress or other activities are not new. For instance, in Chechnya, women have frequently been harassed for wearing “inappropriate” clothing, with such practices receiving support from the state authorities. There have also been reported assassination attempts against Kira Queen, an ethnic Dagestani pornographic actress residing in Europe. Muslim spiritual leaders frequently call on women to dress modestly, which also contributes to and reinforces such activism.
Ingushetia
Three residents of Ingushetia were detained in connection with the murder of a resident of Sunzha. The motive for the killing was allegedly related to witchcraft and a curse supposedly placed on the brother of one of the perpetrators. The perpetrator believed that the only way to remove the curse was to kill the alleged witch, and he persuaded two friends to assist him in the murder. The 52-year-old victim was shot dead at his home.
Violence against people involved in magic, fortune-telling, and witchcraft is not a new phenomenon in the North Caucasus. Witchcraft is considered a grave sin in Islam, and with the rise of religiosity in the region, people associated with such practices have increasingly been targeted. Militants of the Imarat Kavkaz have assassinated individuals accused of practicing witchcraft on multiple occasions. Moreover, local spiritual leaders frequently speak out against such practices. Overall, low levels of education and high levels of religiosity contribute to such violence.
Chechnya
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan announced the resumption of direct flights between Grozny and Baku. Regular flights between the two cities had been suspended following the air crash in December 2024. The decision was preceded by a meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Azerbaijani counterpart, Jeyhun Bayramov. Lavrov described the meeting as positive, constructive, and based on mutual trust.
Baku has hosted a sizeable Chechen diaspora since the Russo-Chechen wars. Additionally, significant numbers of ethnic Azerbaijanis reside in Chechnya, Ingushetia, and other regions neighbouring Grozny. Given that Azerbaijan’s land borders have remained closed since the COVID-19 pandemic, and are unlikely to reopen in the foreseeable future, the restoration of direct flights between Baku and Chechnya is important for maintaining people-to-people contacts between the two countries.
Dagestan
The Ministry of Digital Development, Information and Press announced the launch of a new online bot for creating language corpora for Dagestan’s native languages. At the first stage, the project will include Avar, Dargin, Kumyk, Tabasaran, Lak, and Lezgin. The ministry encouraged residents of the republic to volunteer for the project in order to help preserve the region’s native languages. The initiative involves digitising and translating texts from the respective languages into Russian.
Dagestan is a multilingual region, home to more than 20 indigenous languages. However, according to UNESCO, all of Dagestan’s languages are classified as either endangered or vulnerable. Globalisation, rapid urbanisation, and the absence of a common language among Dagestan’s diverse ethnic groups have placed local languages in a difficult position, with Russian increasingly replacing them. Younger generations in the region’s major cities are increasingly unlikely to speak their native languages. Moreover, Russia’s recent education policies have discouraged the use of native languages as languages of instruction in primary and secondary schools. Nevertheless, language activists continue to make efforts to preserve their native languages.