The Russian government and some of its supporters have declared the Nalchik raid a defeat for the Islamist rebels, contrasting it with the June 2004 rebel raid on law enforcement and government buildings in Ingushetia in which the attackers killed dozens of law enforcement and... MORE

RIA Novosti reported on October 18 that a large-scale security operation aimed at tracking down rebel fighters was being carried out in Nalchik. The operation began in the Iskozh district near the 3rd police precinct building, with armored personnel carriers surrounding areas and preventing residents... MORE

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that his ministry would officially request that London take measures in connection with Akhmed Zakaev's statements on the events in Kabardino-Balkaria, MosNews reported on October 17. Zakaev, the London-based Chechen separatist envoy who was recently appointed a deputy prime... MORE

--TOP REBELS KILLED IN DAGESTAN Security forces in Dagestan killed two prominent Islamic militants and detained two others in a special operation against rebels at a dormitory on the outskirts of Khasavyurt, the Associated Press reported on October 19. One police officer was killed and... MORE

Signals of a new "hardline" attitude of the post-Maskhadov Chechen leadership toward the West and the Chechen diaspora are intensifying. One example is the campaign that has been unleashed against Albert Digaev, founder and webmaster of the well-known Chechen site "Amina.com." In July of this... MORE

Rebels in Kabardino-Balkaria on October 13 tried to seize all of the buildings of the republic's power structures in the capital, Nalchik. The attack was carried out by a large group of what the authorities called "religious extremist-Wahhabis." According to official estimates, 150-300 rebels were... MORE

Two Dagestani police officers were killed on the evening of October 10 in a gun battle with a group of rebels, the Regnum information agency reported. The shootout took place near the village of Gimry after members of various police and Dagestani Interior Ministry units... MORE

A Ural car carrying Ingushetian Interior Ministry Internal Troops was blown up on the Kavkaz federal highway in the Gamurzievsky municipal district of the city of Nazran on October 11, Kavkazky Uzel reported. One of the servicemen was lightly injured. According to specialists, the blast... MORE

A jury in Rostov-on-Don last week upheld a June 2004 court decision acquitting two Russian Interior Ministry officers, Yevgeny Khudyakov and Sergei Arakcheyev, who were accused of murdering three Chechens in January 2003. As Novaya gazeta noted on October 10, the incident took place on... MORE

Kavkazky Uzel on October 10 quoted the former commander of the federal Interior Ministry's Internal Troops, Gen.-Col. Anatoly Shkirko, as saying that the number of rebels fighting federal forces in Chechnya is far higher than the estimates given by officials. "Who carried out evening formation... MORE