North Caucasus this week (from July 25 to 31)

Minister for the North Caucasus Lev Kuznetsov said that soon products labeled 'Made in the Caucasus' will appear on Russian shelves. In the framework of the program for import substitution, Russians will be offered environmentally friendly meat, milk, juices, fruits, vegetables and baby nutrition. The minister said that after a year or two the share of these products will increase significantly.

On July 25 Makhachkala hosted a meeting of a government delegation of Dagestan with the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of China to Russia, Li Hui, and Chinese businessmen. According to the participants in the meeting, Dagestan is interested in attracting investors in the development of energy resources.

The video-hosting site YouTube had blocked the account of the state television Grozny.tv from July 18 to 28. In Grozny there is no doubt that the basis for this decision was politically motivated, the reluctance of Western partners to promote the activity of the Chechen government headed by Ramzan Kadyrov. According to the official version of the video-hosting authorities, the blockade was introduced for repeated and serious breaches of the conditions of use on the part of the Chechen television station. The video hosting account was unblocked after an official request from Grozny.tv.

On July 24 Roskomnadzor in turn said that it could block YouTube for copyright infringement on the TV series 'Fizruk' and 'Chernobyl', which belong to the TNT television network. YouTube was bought by Google for 1.65 billion dollars in 2006.

A ministry to combat extremism will be created In Kabardino-Balkaria, the head of the Republic Yuri Kokov said. The ministry will oppose the spread of extremist ideology among the youth.

A museum of antiquity might be opened soon in Nizhny Arkhyz. This idea has been proposed by the Archbishop Theophylact of Pyatigorsk and Circass, who proposed a site next to the church of Christ the Savior for the construction. The initiative was supported by the authorities of Karachay-Cherkessia. The Nizhniy Arkhyz temple was built five years ago in honor of the Face of the Savior, an image of Christ in the rock found in a small cave on the Mitseshta ridge. This rock icon is thought to date back to the 9th century. Now a staircase 345 meters in length has been built to the image.

The training arenas for the teams participating in the football World Cup in 2018 are defined. Of the 64 stadiums on this list, seven are in the North Caucasus (excluding the Rostov ones). According to experts, the Akhmat Arena in Grozny is the most prepared of them. The stadiums in Sochi, Krasnodar, Pyatigorsk, Gelendzhik, Kislovodsk have also been named. The tournament will be held from June 14 to July 15, 2018. The first and final matches will be held at the Luzhniki stadium in Moscow. A schedule has been drawn up so that no team will play at the same stadium twice (apart from the final part).

Kabardino-Balkarian State University is to be suspended from participating in all federal programs for the inefficient use of budget subsidies allocated to perform a state task for three years. This was reported by the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation.

On July 26 the Dagestani theater of poetry ‘From Pushkin to Gamzatov and …’ was opened. The theater is located in the former building of the Pushkin Republican Youth Library and the ethnographic complex ‘Dagestani Village’ in Makhachkala. The initiator of the opening of this extraordinary cultural institutions was the head of the Republic, Ramazan Abdullatipov. "When we realized the depth of his (Pushkin’s) verses, we all fell in love with them, and thanks to Rasul Gamzatov, Dagestan and the Dagestanis are loved by all peoples of the world," the head of the republic said during his speech. Among the aims of the new theater is involving society in literature and reading, especially poetry, reviving the tradition of poetic performance, and in the future expanding cultural contacts and promoting Dagestani poetry beyond the country.

In front of the theater of poetry, opposite Pushkin’s monument, a monument to the national poet of Dagestan Rasul Gamzatov was erected.

On August 2 in Chechnya, a massive 22-kilometer bike ride along the ‘Kavkaz’ highway from Argun to Gudermes is planned. The event is dedicated to the birthday of Ayman Kadyrova, wife of the first president of the Chechen Republic, who died tragically. There will be no professional bikers at the event. There are already 3000 participants, aged from 7 to 78 years. A prize of a Lada Priora car will be waiting for the winner in Gudermes.

An original installation for harvesting cucumbers is being used in one of the agricultural enterprises of the Kursk region of Stavropol. The harvesters are placed on a special suspension lying face down, so that the hands are free to reach the ground.

Haji Muhammad Rakhimov has been re-elected for another five years as Chairman of the Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of Stavropol.  Five years ago he created a regional DUM. In the Stavropol government it is said that in the past five years Rahim achieved impressive success in this post.

On Monday July 27 Pyatigorsk hosted events in memory of Mikhail Lermontov. This year marks 174 years since his death in a duel. Admirers of the poet first gathered in the museum ‘’House of Lermontov’, then went to pray at the Lazarev church. The event continued in the Pyatigorsk necropolis at the site of the poet's death. It was decided to build a stone monument here in 1913 to mark the hundredth anniversary of Lermontov. But construction was delayed for two years.

Chechen state television ‘Grozniy’ signed a contract with ‘NTV Plus’ to broadcast the home matches of the Makhachkala club ‘Anzhi’. 'Chechen TV’ workers  have a mobile station, which allows the event to be broadcast in HD quality in real-time. PTS is able to use 48 cameras, but 12 are enough for football broadcasting. In May this year ‘Grozny TV’  broadcast a match in the Cup of Russia between ‘Locomotive’ and ‘Kuban’ from Astrakhan.

On July 27 the Nalchik court began considering the criminal case into the theft of the leadership of the football club ‘Spartak Nalchik’, who had stolen 280 million rubles. A group of officials had falsified financial documents. One of the four suspects of the football club is on the international wanted list.

On July 4 in Makhachkala hospital № 3 the three millionth resident of Dagestan was born. Since he was born, along with his twin brother, his parents have been determining for a long time which of them should be regarded as the commemorative child. The government of the Republic has decided to allocate the family a comfortable apartment, a car, land and 250 thousand rubles.

The well-known Kabardino-Balkar climber, Kazbek Shibzukhov, has conquered the western peak of Elbrus once again. But this time there has been an unpleasant episode for him. Lightning struck the climber almost at the top. The charge went through his ice-pick and ski poles to the ground. It took Shibzukhov three hours to regain himself, but he descended without assistance.

Other, more pleasant news was told to reporters by the climber Anzor Hajj. He has climbed Mount Elbrus with a portrait of Vladimir Vysotsky. Now this portrait will be given to the Moscow museum of the great artist and singer-songwriter.  The movie ‘Vertical’, in which Vysotsky played the leading role, was shot in the Shheldinskiy Gorge of Kabardino-Balkaria in 1966. Before the filming Vysotsky and a group of artists had taken a course for the icon ‘Climber of the USSR’ with scoring and awarding of the third climbing sports category on mountaineering.

The Head of Dagestan has signed a decree on awarding the Rasul Gamzatov prizes in 2015. They were given to the writers Ajshat Aliyeva (for the book ‘Song of a Mother’) and Magomed Patach (for the book ‘Selected’).

The 9th International Art Symposium ‘Alanika’ will be held in Vadikavkaz in the first half of August. The forum will last two weeks. It will bring together artists of Russia, the USA, Georgia, Great Britain, Iran, Ecuador and other countries. The forum was organized by the North-Caucasian branch of the State Center for Contemporary Art and its partner, the nonprofit foundation supporting culture, art and architecture ‘Art Caucasus’, supported by the Russian Ministry of Culture.