A volunteer for the international medical charity Medecins sans Frontieres ("Doctors Without Borders") was freed last weekend some 607 days after his kidnapping in Dagestan. Arjan Erkel is now safely back in his native Holland, apparently in reasonably good health but about forty pounds lighter... MORE

--STUDY HIGHLIGHTS ETHNIC PREJUDICES A Russian citizen who specializes in studying the country's ethnic minorities has found disturbing new evidence of ethnic-Russian chauvinism even in the country's mainstream news media. Suliyeta Kusova, head of the Association on Ethnic Problems, found that crossword puzzles in the... MORE

CORRECTION: The March 31 issue of Chechnya Weekly confused two different demonstrations in Moscow during the Brezhnev years, each of which in its own way was a milestone in the development of the dissident movement. We incorrectly wrote that "it was on Moscow's celebrated Pushkin... MORE

The noose closed tighter on Chechen refugees on April 1 with the closing of the Sputnik tent camp. That leaves only the nearby Satsita camp as the last one in Ingushetia still functioning--and the Russian authorities want to close that camp as well. The Interfax... MORE

The Dubrovka hostage crisis of October 2002 is back in the news, in Russia and also in Germany, where state prosecutors are investigating evidence that the terrorists who planned that terrorist raid on a Moscow theater may have included a group of Chechens living temporarily... MORE

Last week the federal Duma gave preliminary approval to a controversial bill that would limit the rights of Russians to organize street demonstrations such as those that have taken place to protest the Putin administration's policies in Chechnya. Grigory Yavlinsky, head of the opposition Yabloko... MORE

As this issue of Chechnya Weekly goes to press, the authorities in Qatar are still proceeding with plans to try two Russian intelligence officers accused of assassinating the Chechen extremist leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiev (see Chechnya Weekly, March 24). One of the defense lawyers for the... MORE

Contrary to the reassuring news that most Russians are receiving via the state television networks--now tightly controlled by the Putin administration--the arrival of spring has brought a sharp increase in the activity of Chechnya's separatist guerrillas. A March 30 article by Ivan Smirnov on the... MORE

On the wall of a crowded bus shelter in Grozny, surrounded by other handwritten announcements, is posted the following: "I can get you a passport for foreign travel. Contact Aminat at…" Two women who have just read that advertisement are discussing it. One says, "If... MORE

--CONTROVERSIAL FILM NIXED A film festival in Chicago has unexpectedly canceled plans to include Russian director Andrei Nekrasov's documentary about the 1999 apartment bombings that helped Vladimir Putin justify the second Chechen war (see Chechnya Weekly, January 21). According to an April 4 report on... MORE