a manhunt is underway and dagestan -- in dagestan. voting is underway in the central african republic. the country is electing a new president and a new parliament today. polling stations opened slightly later than planned due to logistical issues, but overall many are hoping that the vote will restore democracy after years of sectarian tensions. since february the vote has been delayed four times due to security reasons. voters are casting their ballot today. >> if we pick the right president, he will change our country. that is why we are here today. we want a president who is for unity, can bring peace. many central africans have university degrees. we need to integrate people. we need companies to come back here and develop our country. that development will bring change. today is such a wonderful day for all central africans. we came to vote for a president who will bring peace and security, everything. this, let'smore on bring in our guest, the president of the african information club. thank you for being with us on "france 24.

but there is, dagestan as well, where the center is trying very different approaches and it means dagestan pretty dangerous place in terms of well stability in the future. >> in terms of central asia, it's probably useful since we're talking about ukraine to a certain extent, to remind us that all of this started because of the issue of the association agreement with the eu and putin was pushing for a crew crane signing up for the economic union and just as the old line was, the soviet union can't exist, lodgelically, it makes a lot less sense. it's russia, belarus kazakhstan and other small countries. it's important to make the right choice antd it didn't work out well for him in the long run, so even know in central asia, only kazakhstan and kyrgyzstan are signed up and i think russia in the median term is destined to lose more to china and central asia given just the economic power that the two countries wield. in terms of the caucuses and recruitment in the region, i'm not a specialist on this. the numbers you see run from the hundreds to the thousands in terms of recruits from russia

you can see the same in dagestan. you have a few hundred fighters. is very dangerous for them. especially for all these countries in central asia. you look at it from different perspective. . all these people are going there not for the interest of fighting assad, but they are trying to train all these fighters because maybe they would use them back. if you remember after the afghan jihad. even here in the united states, we have terrorists attacks conducted or plotted by people who actually went and traveled to afghanistan during the soviet jihad. that's why it's important also to point out that people now also are coming back. because the pressure that isis and other groups under in both syria and iraq. we found out between 20 to 30% in western countries foreign fighters are returning. and we need to figure out why they are returning, what did they do when they were in syria and are they trying to carry out another attack. >> they are stunning numbers. a new report out. thank you very much. i appreciate it. >>> next, back to politics. the fall out f