The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services recently granted political asylum to Alyona Morozava, the 28-year-old woman who lost her mother and boyfriend in the September 1999 explosion that destroyed her apartment building on Ulitsa Guryanova in southern Moscow. Ms. Morozava participated in the work of... MORE

How relevant is it today to speak of the "overall radicalization" of the Chechen resistance movement? What prompts so many analysts and observers to consider the actions of only two detachments of the Chechen resistance as characteristic of all armed formations subordinated to Aslan Maskhadov?... 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

Tensions between Chechnya and Dagestan escalated this week after police in the Dagestani city of Khasavyurt detained Zulai Kadyorva, sister of Chechnya's first deputy prime minister, Ramzan Kadyrov. Son of assassinated pro-Moscow Chechen president, Akhmed Kadyrov, Ramzan heads the republic's infamous presidential security service. According... MORE

Chechen separatist officials sent a letter to the European Parliament on January 9 charging that Russian special forces had kidnapped relatives of separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov, MosNews reported on January 10. According to the letter, Maskhadov's sister and two brothers, aged 70 to 76, were... MORE

The epidemic of kidnappings in Chechnya has not abated with the arrival of a new year. According to the Grozny office of Memorial, 11 residents of the republic were killed, eight disappeared and another 32 were detained by "various power structures" during the first week... MORE

Ekho Moskvy reported on January 11 that a "large-scale special operation" was underway in several districts of Ingushetia. According to the radio station, the operation involved "practically all of the republic's security services." It followed an attack by unknown assailants on the quarters of a... MORE

It has been four and a half years since Khava Baraeva carried out the first suicide bombing in Russia, yet the threat of suicide terrorism shows no sign of subsiding. After the wave of suicide bombings that shook Russia in 2003 ended, many observers thought... 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

On December 29, President Vladimir Putin conferred Russia's highest award, the Hero of the Russian Federation, on Ramzan Kadyrov, the pro-Moscow Chechen government's first deputy prime minister and son of the late Chechen president. According to the corresponding presidential decree, the younger Kadyrov was awarded... MORE