Resettlers treat Medvedev's decision to give Dagestani villages to Azerbaijan as a disaster

A press conference on the problems of former residents of the village of Khrakh-Uba, transferred to Azerbaijan by Russian authorities, was held today at the editorial office of the "Derbent" News Agency, the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent reports.

The problems of migrants from Khrakh-Uba have been ignored by Dagestani authorities and the federal centre since 2010, said local residents, who treated the transfer of two Dagestani villages to Azerbaijan as a catastrophe.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that the village of Khrakh-Uba and the adjacent village of Uryan-Uba are in the Khachmaz District of Azerbaijan. Earlier, they were part of the Magaramkent District of Dagestan, but in 1991, when the USSR collapsed, they turned to be a sort of enclaves in the territory of Azerbaijan. In September 2010, the agreement was signed on fixing the Russian-Azerbaijani border; and the villages were included into Azerbaijan; the agreement was signed by Dmitry Medvedev and Ilham Aliev.

After signing the agreement, residents of Khrakh-Uba and Uryan-Uba "found themselves in a difficult situation," Milrad Fatullaev, editor-in-chief of the RIA Derbent, said during the press conference.

"The Medvedev-Aliev agreement could not be ratified. The Khrakh-Uba and Uryan-Uba villages were part of the Magaramkent District of Dagestan; and there is no document or normative act that could state that these villages are Azerbaijani territory," said Mr Fatullaev.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.