--NORTH OSSETIA-INGUSHETIA SITUATION SIMMERS Tensions are continuing to run high along the border between North Ossetia and Ingushetia, where a group of North Ossetian vigilantes temporarily seized a checkpoint last weekend. The vigilantes, said to include relatives of Beslan hostages, demanded that the authorities bar... MORE

--NO SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONE FOR CHECHNYA? The latest version of a draft treaty on future relations between the federal government and the pro-Moscow administration in Chechnya does not include provisions for creating a special economic zone in the republic, the Interfax news agency reported on... MORE

--SUPREME COURT OVERTURNS ACQUITAL OF RUSSIAN TROOPS Russia's Supreme Court on November 11 overturned the North Caucasus Military District Court's June 29 acquittal of two officers of the Interior Ministry's Internal Troops, Yevgeny Khudyakov and Sergei Arakcheyev, who were accused of murdering three civilians in... MORE

--SERBIAN WAR CRIMINALS IN CHECHNYA? A group of Serbian terrorists was sent to Chechnya by the Russian secret services several months ago, United Press International reported on November 18. The group was headed by Rajko Kusic, a Serb paramilitary commander who is wanted by the... MORE

--REBEL WEBSITE REAPPEARS IN LITHUANIA Kavkaz Center, the Chechen separatist website, resumed operations in Lithuania on November 29. Interfax quoted a statement from the website's administration as saying that operations resumed as soon as the Second District Court in Vilnius, Lithuania's capital, ruled that all... MORE

--PUTIN CONDEMNS ASYLUM FOR "TERRORISTS" President Vladimir Putin on December 3 lashed out at the United States and Great Britain for having granted political asylum to Ilyas Akhmadov and Akhmed Zakaev, respectively. "Providing safe haven and support to terrorists, their accomplices and sponsors actually serves... MORE

--ONE CIVILIAN KILLED, TWO WOUNDED IN ROCKET ATTACK Kavkazky Uzel, citing the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, reported on December 14 that a brother and sister were being treated in Grozny's Hospital No. 9 for serious wounds they received on December 3, when a helicopter gunship fired... MORE

--BODY COUNTS The Federal Security Service claimed that more than 200 separatist fighters were killed and more than 900 people detained on suspicion of "involvement in terrorist activities" in Chechnya during 2004, Gazeta.ru reported on January 3. The rebels, for their part, claimed they killed... MORE

--MINE WOUNDS CEMETERY WATCHMAN Stepan Shupshanov, a resident of the Chechen village of Naurskaya, was hospitalized with multiple shrapnel wounds after stepping on a mine that had apparently been planted by separatist rebels in the cemetery where he worked as a watchman. On January 10,... MORE

--MURTAZALIEVA GETS NINE YEARS Vladimir Suvorov, lawyer for Zara Murtazalieva, the 21-year-old Chechen woman sentenced to nine years in prison January 17 for conspiring to carry out a terrorist attack in Moscow's Okhotny Ryad shopping center, recruiting two Russian women to act as suicide bombers,... MORE