Hurriyet Daily News -- Azerbaijani authorities have arrested the head of an independent election monitoring group after it criticized presidential polls that secured a new term for strongman Ilham Aliyev, one of his colleagues said Dec. 17.

RFE/RL Caucasus Report -- Russian President Vladimir Putin has accepted the resignation of the president of the Kabardino-Balkaria Republic (KBR), multimillionnaire Arsen Kanokov, the man whom he had named to that post eight years ago. 

Al-Monitor -- What could speak best of a minority’s cultural tragedy? “We are recovering the lost Laz words,” professor Mehmet Bekaroglu, the head of the Laz Institute, told me when I asked him about the cultural revival of the Laz people. Lost words? They are the words that have disappeared from the daily language after decades of disuse.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Georgia, the ideologue of the "Rose Revolution" in 2003, Richard Miles, has accused the former Georgian leader, Mikheil Saakashvili, of inadequacy. He criticised him for provoking the five-day war, which took place in August 2008. According to the diplomat, Saakashvili is incapable of finding a common language with anyone. "Saakashvili could have avoided drawing Georgia into armed confrontation with Russia in 2008," declared Richard Miles. He expressed surprise at the inadequate conduct of the former Georgian leader during those events.

YEREVAN (RFE/RL)—Official Yerevan criticized the European Parliament on Thursday for again effectively accusing Armenia of occupying Azerbaijani territory.