Last week's sensational raid on Ingushetia gave the anti-Moscow guerrillas a significant moral advantage as compared with other recent tactical novelties such as suicide bombings: To any objective observer, it looked a lot more like a legitimate military operation than a terrorist attack. The planners... MORE

Q. What sort of education do you have? A. A post-graduate legal education. I'm finishing now, I'll be taking examinations. Q. What kind of examinations? A. What do you mean, what kind? Just examinations, that's all. Q. What's the name of the educational institution where... MORE

Contrary to the impression fostered by Kremlin spokesmen, Chechnya's highways still have an extensive network of military checkpoints that are used by federal soldiers to extort bribes from civilians. In a recent article for the German daily Suddeutsche Zeitung, Chechen journalist Mainat Abdulaeva reported that... MORE

A Russian law, little-noticed at the time of its passage in late 2002, authorizes the Russian government to retain the dead bodies of Chechen guerrillas killed by federal troops or police and considered to be terrorists. Since the law does not require the dead guerrilla... MORE

--EX-JUDGE SAYS INGUSHETIA ATTACKS STEM FROM FSB DEPREDATIONS Boris Ozdoyev, the retired Ingush judge whose son Rashid was apparently kidnapped by the FSB after he tried to warn his colleagues in the Ingush procuracy and higher officials in Moscow of federal atrocities against civilians in... MORE

Last week's issue of Chechnya Weekly mistakenly referred to Nazran as the capital of Ingushetia. In fact, the Ingush capital was transferred from Nazran to the newly built city of Magas in 1998. We regret our error.

In what appeared to be a bold escalation in tactics and targeting by Chechnya's separatist guerrillas, the headquarters of Ingushetia's interior ministry in the republic's capital of Nazran was seized on the evening of June 21 by gunmen shouting an Islamic slogan popular among those... MORE

"We tried to approach the Russian government with our proposal several times. We told them, 'Let's stop this war ourselves without involving anyone into this process.' We are fighting to eliminate the danger to the very existence of the Chechen people. And where does this... MORE

Removing whatever slight shade of doubt might have existed about his willingness to accept the artificially engineered "draft Alkhanov" campaign of the last few weeks, Alu Alkhanov visited President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on June 15, RIA Novosti reported. The Kadyrov clan's chosen presidential candidate... MORE

Leaders of Russia's most prominent independent human rights organizations have proposed that the special election for the presidency of Chechnya, scheduled to take place on August 29, be postponed. As their joint statement of June 15 put it, "the current situation in the Chechen Republic... MORE