Ramzan Kadyrov’s first decree following his inauguration as Chechnya’s president confirmed a concept for the Chechen Republic’s nationalities policy, Ekspert Online (Expert.ru) reported on April 11. The website quoted the Chechen government’s website Chechnya.ru as saying that the nationalities policy concept amounts to a “system... MORE

Chechen Republic President Ramzan Kadyrov reorganized his government on April 10, cutting the number of deputy prime ministers from eight to three. That same day, Chechnya’s parliament unanimously confirmed Odes Baisultanov, Kadyrov’s cousin, as the republic’s prime minister. Among the posts that Kadyrov eliminated was... MORE

Commenting on reports that the Chechen parliament had asked Moscow for an initial payment of 18.1 billion rubles (around $691 million), to be followed by yearly payments of 10 billion rubles (around $384 million), political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin, who heads the Merkator research group, told... MORE

RIA Novosti, on April 4, quoted an unnamed federal Interior Ministry official as saying that the commander of the rebel Eastern Front and close associate of the late Shamil Basaev, Suleiman Imurzaev, aka Khairulla, was killed by security forces. “As a result of a special... MORE

Kommersant reported on April 4 that Ramzan Kadyrov was to be awarded the Distinguished Defender of Human Rights award in Grozny that same day. As the Moscow Times reported on April 5, Alexander Sapronov, the spokesman for a little-known Ukraine-based NGO called the International Committee... MORE

President George W. Bush welcomed Gen. Vladimir Shamanov, the aide to Russia’s defense minister and former Ulyanovsk governor who commanded troops in Chechnya accused of committing atrocities, into the Oval Office on March 26. Shamanov visited the White House in his capacity as co-chairman of... MORE

There are indications that the Russian military may be planning to pull out of Chechnya (that is, presumably, out of that part of the Chechen Republic which lies south of the Terek River) over the course of the next three months. General Viktor Kazantsev, the... MORE

Several Chechen separatist websites last week published a letter, ostensibly written by five former members of the “Gorets” special forces unit headed by Movladi Baisarov, the erstwhile bodyguard to Akhmad Kadyrov who was gunned down in Moscow last November, claiming that Anna Politkovskaya was murdered... MORE