HUMAN COSTS OF WAR MOUNT

The Kadyrov administration’s deputy prime minister for the security agencies, Movsar Khamidov, who had already confirmed the estimate in a leaked report that forty-nine unmarked mass graves have been found in Chechnya (see Chechnya Weekly, April 15), has now added another telling detail. Khamidov is quoted by Grozny correspondent Mainat Abdulaeva of Novaya gazeta in that newspaper’s April 24 issue as admitting that “practically no efforts are underway to try to identify the bodies.” He said that the qualified experts and specialized equipment needed are not available.

Also according to Abdulaeva, another official of the Kadyrov administration, Minister of Health Shakhid Akhmadov, recently stated that more than 1,000 children have been crippled by military operations in Chechnya, and that more than 3,500 have been killed. Abdulaeva wrote that Akhmadov also estimated that nearly 300,000 Chechen children are now suffering from traumas, congenital pathologies and respiratory or cardiovascular illnesses caused by the war.