A guerrilla raid on well-defended Grozny would be a more difficult challenge for the separatist rebels than the recent raid on Ingushetia, and a much more impressive achievement should it succeed. But the recent experience in Ingushetia, combined with memories of the rebels' brilliant storming... MORE

Eight Russian troops were slain in Chechnya during a 24-hour period ending on July 10, according to the Associated Press. An unnamed official in Grozny's pro-Moscow administration told the news agency that five of the servicemen were killed by gunfire, including an episode in Grozny... MORE

Valentina Melnikova of the respected Committee of Soldiers' Mothers told Agence France-Presse last week that her organization now estimates at nearly 13,000 the cumulative total of Russian servicemen who have been killed in the second Chechen war. She emphasized that unlike Russia's Defense Ministry, "[w]e... MORE

Though seriously ill, the dissident lawyer Mikhail Trepashkin is being held illegally in a Moscow isolation cell, according to a July 9 article on the Newsru.com website. The terms of Trepashkin's May 19 sentence for allegedly having revealed state secrets (see Chechnya Weekly, May 26)... MORE

In a long analysis published in Kommersant on July 5, Mikhail Zygar concluded that the assassination of a Chechen extremist in Qatar by two operatives of Russian military intelligence has led to a disastrous result in one often overlooked area of Russian foreign policy. Even... MORE

It was entirely predictable that the Moscow district court considering the Dubrovka lawsuit against Vladimir Putin would rule in Putin's favor. What was not so predictable was that the court decision would set forth as an explicit constitutional rule that the president is in principle... 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

Just how passive was the federal military during last month's rebel raid on Ingushetia? Issa Kostoev, who represents Ingushetia in the upper house of the federal parliament, provided further revelations in an interview with Sanobar Shermatova published by the weekly Moskovskie novosti on July 1.... MORE

Powerful forces within the Putin administration are trying to make Anatoly Kvashnin, head of the Russian armed forces' general staff, the scapegoat for last month's fiasco in Ingushetia. A June 30 article by Igor Plugatarev in Nezavisimaya gazeta cited unnamed sources in the federal ministry... MORE

July 4 saw a duel of words between a spokesman for the Russian security services' headquarters in the northern Caucasus and a representative of Aslan Maskhadov's underground separatist government. As reported by the Interfax news agency, Russian Major-General Ilya Shabalkin claimed on that day that... MORE