--WEBSITE CLAIMS BASAEV MET WITH CIA AGENTS The pro-Kremlin Utro.ru website reported February 28 that "military experts" believe that the video posted by the Kavkazcenter website earlier this month in which Chechen rebel warlord Shamil Basaev dispelled rumors that he had been killed was shot... MORE

--BESLAN WOMEN DEMONSTRATE Some 1,000 people, including members of the "Women of Beslan" group, held a demonstration in Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia, on March 8 after the federal Prosecutor General's Office refused to investigate the fact that clothes, other personal effects and body... MORE

--ALKHANOV RIDICULES MASKHADOV'S SUCCESSOR Chechen President Alu Alkhanov said that he knew nothing about Aslan Maskhadov's successor, Sheikh Abdul-Khalim Sadulaev, and that the Chechen Interior Ministry had no information about him. "I have never heard of this person before, and I am not the only... MORE

--POLL SHOWS SUPPORT FOR RUSSIAN PULLOUT AND U.N. PEACEKEEPERS The Caucasus Times reported on March 21 that in a poll of Grozny residents conducted in partnership with Prague Watchdog over March 11-15, 43% of respondents said "the withdrawal of the Russian military from Chechnya" would... MORE

--WEEKLY RESUMES ITS CRITICISM OF KREMLIN'S CHECHNYA POLICY Though Russia's electronic broadcast media are increasingly timid about Chechnya, the reformist weekly Novoye Vremya is back in action after an ownership dispute forced it to suspend publication—and is once again publishing severely critical articles about the... MORE

--TWELVE RUSSIAN SERVICEMEN KILLED OVER 24-HOUR PERIOD Lending further credence to claims by separatist president Maskhadov that the rebel guerrillas have stepped up their activity in recent weeks, an official of the pro-Moscow Chechen administration anonymously told the Associate Press on June 20 that twelve... MORE

--EX-JUDGE SAYS INGUSHETIA ATTACKS STEM FROM FSB DEPREDATIONS Boris Ozdoyev, the retired Ingush judge whose son Rashid was apparently kidnapped by the FSB after he tried to warn his colleagues in the Ingush procuracy and higher officials in Moscow of federal atrocities against civilians in... MORE

--SOME INGUSHETIA RAIDERS HAD GRU DOCUMENTS According to the brother of an FSB officer slain in the late-June raid on Ingushetia, at least some of the guerrilla raiders were equipped with identification documents from the GRU, the federal military-intelligence agency, Polit.ru reported on July 2.... MORE

--INGUSHETIAN AUTHORITIES FORCING OUT CHECHEN REFUGEES A July 5 report on the Caucasian Knot website provided further evidence that the federal and Ingushetian authorities are successfully exploiting last month's guerilla raid as a justification for intensifying pressures on Chechen refugees to return home from Ingushetia.... MORE

--OSCE WILL NOT MONITOR CHECHEN ELECTION The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has decided not to send official observers to monitor the August 29 election. In a July 15 interview with RIA Novosti, the head of the OSCE's bureau for democracy and human... MORE