Event

The Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) has the pleasure of inviting you to the seminar:

Violence in the North Caucasus and the Olympics in Sochi 2014

The Olympic Games that are to be held in Sochi, North Caucasus in 2014, are designed to be a manifestation of the reconstruction of Russia and it’s greatness under Putin. This is the region Putin has struggled to control since the fall of the Soviet Union. It was here Putin started his “unification” of Russia in 1999 through the second war in Chechnya.

Now, after almost 15 years have passed, the situation in North Caucasus is critical. The conflicts between different Russian forces and armed Islamist insurgent groups have become so violent that the situation in Dagestan must be characterized as a state of war. Chechnya is being held under Russian control by Ramzan Kadyrov’s iron fist, but the republic is less Russian than ever.

Demands about greater autonomy and sovereignty keep coming from the many different ethnic groups that live in this region. One of these groups is the Circassians. In 2014 it will be exactly 150 years ago that the Cherkess resistance was crushed by Russian forces on Krasnaya Poljana, the field where the Olymic Games are to be held. The leader of one of the Islamist insurgent groups in the North Caucasus recently encouraged  to use “maximal power” to prevent president Putin to stage the Olympic Games in Sochi, according to Reuters.

Come and hear Russia’s foremost experts on the North Caucasus talk about the challenges in this region towards the Olympic Games in Sochi 2014.

This seminar will be held in both English and Russian, with translation from Russian to English.

Program 10.00-13.00:

• 10.00-10.15 Introduction
• 10.15-11.00: The brewing war in Dagestan (In Russisan with interpretor) Prof. Enver Kisriev
• 11.00-11.30: The spiral of violence in the North Caucasus – implications for the Sochi Olympics Dr. Alexei Malashenko
    
• 11.30-11.45 Break
• 11.45-12.30: The Cherkess issue and the Sochi Olympics Dr. Naima Neflyasheva
• 12.30-13.00 Q&A