Caucasus (bbabo.net), - In the republics of the North Caucasus, natural population growth is recorded in 2023, follows from Rosstat data.
In Dagestan over the year, the natural increase was 27,754 people, in Chechnya - 24,251 people, in Ingushetia - 6,217 people, in Kabardino-Balkaria - 3,132 people, in North Ossetia - 503 people, in Karachay-Cherkessia - 481 people.
Natural decline among the subjects of the North Caucasian Federal District was recorded only in the Stavropol Territory. Over the year it amounted to 6,584 people.
Among the regions of the North Caucasus Federal District in terms of population as of January 1, 2024 and growth, Dagestan is the leader:
Dagestan - 3 million 221 thousand people (increase +22.4 thousand people);
Stavropol Territory - 2 million 886 thousand people (decrease -5.1 thousand people);
Chechnya - 1 million 553 thousand people (increase +19.6 thousand people);
Kabardino-Balkaria - 905 thousand people (increase +2.2 thousand people);
North Ossetia - 679 thousand people (decrease - 1.9 thousand people);
Ingushetia - 527 thousand people (increase +8.1 thousand people);
Karachay-Cherkessia - 468.3 thousand people (decrease -0.1 thousand people).
As of January 1, 2024, the population of the North Caucasus Federal District was 10 million 251 thousand people. The increase was 45.3 thousand people (natural increase - 55.7 thousand people, migration - minus 10.4 thousand people).
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Head of the State Security Service of Azerbaijan: France incites Armenia to a new war
Caucasus (bbabo.net), - France is inciting Armenia to a new war in the South Caucasus, said the head of the State Security Service (SSS) of Azerbaijan, Colonel General Ali Nagiyev, in an article published today, March 28, in the official newspaper “Respublika” in in connection with the 105th anniversary of the creation of the national security bodies of Azerbaijan.
According to him, instead of maintaining peace in the region, France supplies weapons and ammunition to Armenia, which “kept Azerbaijani territories under occupation for about 30 years.”
“France is placing its military mission there, inciting Armenia to another war, trying to implement its plan to turn the South Caucasus into a battlefield,” points out the head of the main Azerbaijani intelligence service.
Not limited to this, Nagiyev further asserts, Paris “to achieve its goal, through representatives of its own special services, attracts various individuals to secret cooperation, forms a spy network, and acts to the detriment of Baku.”
The head of the State Security Service indicated that the department he heads exposed this activity by taking “necessary and adequate steps.”
“In the future, appropriate measures will be taken to prevent and suppress threats to the security of our state, while the operational situation will always be under control. We (the State Security Service of Azerbaijan - Ed.) must always be prepared for new challenges and all kinds of negative scenarios, and not lose vigilance in matters of reliable security,” Nagiyev notes.
At the end of last year, a diplomatic scandal broke out between Azerbaijan and France. The French Ambassador to Baku, Anne Boyon, was summoned on December 26 to the Foreign Ministry of the Transcaucasian republic. The head of the French diplomatic mission was informed of the “serious protest” of the Azerbaijani government in connection with the activities of the embassy employees under her command, which contradict the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961 and “do not correspond to their diplomatic status.” Two employees of the diplomatic mission of the Fifth Republic in the Azerbaijani capital were declared persona non grata and were ordered to leave Azerbaijan within 48 hours. Paris reciprocated by declaring two Azerbaijani citizens undesirable persons.
From 2020 to this day, the French leadership has taken a “destructive and provocative” position towards Azerbaijan. This was stated by President Ilham Aliyev on October 11, receiving in Baku the participants of the 53rd meeting of the Council of Heads of Security Agencies and Special Services of the CIS Member States.
Azerbaijan's credibility in France as even a potential mediator in the process of normalizing relations with Armenia is currently zero, Ambassador Elchin Amirbekov, the Azerbaijani President's Representative for Special Assignments, said in an interview with Radio France in October of this year.
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