Why is the Caucasus Region the focus of many of the conflicts in Russia and the Republics?

Answer 1

There are really two reasons for this:

1) The Caucasus Region has been under Russian occupation for quite a while, but the majority of the Caucasus's inhabitants are still not ethnically Russian and remain quite drastically different. Tatars, for instance, are a nomadic people who have more in common with Mongolians than Russians. Chechens are avowed Moslems while Russians are Orthodox Christians. Kalmyks and Daghestanis were brutally oppressed by the Soviet Government even as they tried to integrate with it. These differences and injustices have prompted a number of different groups to try to obtain independence.

2) Russia despises the idea that its federation which, as noted, covers many non-Russian territories, should be broken up any further than it has been and regrets the loss of the other Soviet Republics. However, it sees fit to get retribution on the Republics for leaving by helping secessionist movements in those states succeed. Russia has invested heavily in the creation of South Ossetia and even more-so in Abkhazia in order to destabilize Georgia. Since the region already has a number of repressed minorities, giving guns to them is an easy way to provoke conflict (whereas the areas near Belarus or Kazakhstan do not have disenfranchised minorities making it more difficult to promote conflict).