President Vladimir Putin discussed Chechnya in two interviews with European media in the lead-up to the May 9 celebrations in Moscow marking the 60th anniversary of Victory Day. One of the interviews, on May 5, was with Germany's ARD and ZDF television channels, while the... MORE

Chechen rebel field commander Doku Umarov has announced that separatist forces are changing their tactics and will attack outside Chechnya. RFE/RL reported on May 10 that Umarov, who made his comments in an interview with its North Caucasus Service director Aslan Doukaev on May 7,... MORE

Russian news agencies reported on May 9 that rebel forces had planned that day to attack Tsentoroi, the home village of Chechen Deputy Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov, but were hit preemptively by Chechen security forces near the village of Alleroi. Interfax quoted Chechen Interior Minister... MORE

Gen.-Major Ilya Shabalkin, spokesman for the Russian military operation in the North Caucasus, announced on May 8 that Russian security personnel had detained a Chechen woman in the town of Urus-Martan alleged to be a trainer for suicide bombers, along with another militant in Grozny... MORE

The International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF) on May 9 published an open letter to Chechnya's prosecutor, Vladimir Kravchenko, regarding what it described as the "unlawful detention" and "disappearance" of Murad Muradov, chairman of the humanitarian non-governmental organization "Save the Generation," on April 15.... MORE

In an interview with the newspaper Dagestanskaya pravda published last November 24, the Prosecutor of Dagestan, Imam Yaraliev, acknowledged that the major destabilizing factor in the republic remained the ongoing war in Chechnya. Dagestan managed to maintain a level of relative stability throughout the 1990s... MORE

--DAGESTAN VIOLENCE UNABATED A bomb apparently detonated by remote control blew up a police car in central Makhachkala on May 10, killing one police officer in the car and wounding a boy and a girl who were walking by, the Associated Press reported, quoting a... MORE

Kavkazky Uzel reported on May 2 that a large-scale battle took place between a group of rebel fighters and a federal military unit in Chechnya's Nozhai-Yurt district, which is located in the southeastern part of the republic. A source in the federal command told the... MORE

Relations between the authorities in Chechnya and Dagestan continued to founder last week, with Chechen First Deputy Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov claiming in an interview published on April 29 in Komsomolskaya pravda that Shamil Basaev is hiding out in Dagestan. Kadyrov told the newspaper that... MORE

Police in Dagestan reported on May 3 that they had found evidence of plans to organize attacks against Dagestani officials in the homes of three detained militants. A source in the Makhachkala police headquarters told Itar-Tass that while searching the home of Magomed Kuramagomedov, they... MORE