Today is fifteen years since the Chechen human rights activist Natasha Estemirova was assassinated in Russia’s North Caucasus region.

She was an incredible, inspiring person and is not forgotten.

A few words about her in this thread.

Natasha's father, a Chechen named Hussein, had been deported to Kazakhstan in 1944, at the age of 12. He was separated from his sisters, fell into crime to survive at a time of desperate hunger and was sent to prison in the small town of Kamyshlov in Russia’s Urals.

Today is 80 years since Stalin’s deportation of around half a million Chechens and Ingush (the entire population) from their North Caucasus home to Central Asia, using cattle wagons. An estimated 25% died on the way or succumbed to starvation and disease within 5 years of arrival Dmitry Beliakov’s unique portraits of survivors and their testimony feature in this report today from @RFERL: [Rus]:
See also video interviews with survivors here [Rus]:
kavkazr.com/a/zhertvy-stal…
kavkazr.com/a/let-deportat…

Thread/Reading List:
For those learning about Dagestan for the first time (after the recent anti-Jewish pogroms), may I humbly offer my memoir 'High Caucasus' and the following English-language books for wider background and context on the republic: My own book describes a three-week walk through (to me, incredible, intoxicating, hospitable, puzzling, sometimes troubling and very rarely hostile) mountain Dagestan in 2008, as part of a longer journey from the Black Sea to the Caspian:

A new state-approved Russian school history book has put the victims of WWII deportations in the North Caucasus on a par with Nazi collaborationists such as Vlasov’s army, causing anger in the region: thetimes.co.uk/article/fury-i… Some local partisans did rise up as the Germans advanced into the Soviet Union. The effect was limited. But Stalin decided to punish entire nations, sending Chechens, Ingush, Balkars and Karachays to Siberia + Central Asia in cattle wagons. Thousands died en route and on arrival.

Some quick thoughts on the Ukraine/Chechnya comparisons.
There are certainly parallels between the over-confident assault on Grozny in 1994 (and its disastrous results for the Russian army), and the slower than expected advance into Ukraine.
Pic: Grozny, 2000, Dmitri Beliakov. Horrifying video footage of rocket attacks on residential neighbourhoods in Kharkiv and other towns cannot but remind of the pitiless destruction of Grozny in 1995 and 1999, which left the Chechen city almost obliterated.

Chechen blogger who had criticised Ramzan Kadyrov found stabbed to death in hotel room in France. A source close to the inquiry has now confirmed the victim's identity and said the killing "bears all the hallmarks of having a political motive".
thetimes.co.uk/edition/world/… AFP quotes a source saying Imran Aliyev was stabbed several times in the throat after arriving in France with another man, "who presumably had the same nationality".
That tallies with the account of events published by Chechen dissident and Kadyrov critic Tumso Abdurakhmanov.

Some Russian views on @clmazin's great Chernobyl mini-series – a thread.
Inside Russia, people have been watching it on an HBO partner site or on high-quality pirate sites. Responses range from bilious via perceptive/valid criticism to liberal praise. Most infamously, a Komsomolskaya Pravda journo thought the series was an American propaganda stunt to discredit Rosatom, Russia’s nuclear energy corporation. OK, then: kp.ru/daily/26981.7/…