The Kadyrov administration made a deliberate choice not to hold any public, official observation of the deportation's 60th anniversary, according to a February 21 article by Timur Aliev for the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting (available via the institute's website at www.iwpr.net). A... MORE

The exact nature of the relations that exist between Shamil Basaev and Russia's security organs have long been a topic of speculation, especially in light of the federal forces' continuing failure to capture the country's most wanted terrorist in such a tiny area as Chechnya.... MORE

Local authorities in a central Moscow district forbade an anti-war demonstration that was to take place in front of the FSB's headquarters on February 23. According to a February 18 account on the Grani.ru website, the demonstrators sought to commemorate the hundreds of thousands of... MORE

Radical changes in the Putin administration's Chechnya policies are unlikely in the few remaining weeks before next month's presidential election, but one can make certain deductions from the way various factions are jockeying for position. Though Kadyrov still enjoys the strong personal support of President... MORE

During the year that recently ended, the federal armed forces suffered an average of at least 200 to 300 deaths every month in Chechnya. That is the estimate given by Denis Trifonov, a military analyst for the British strategic-research center "Jane's Group," in a February... MORE

"Chechenization" should be used not just as a term for the Putin administration's reliance on Kadyrov, suggests Moskovskie novosti commentator Dmitry Oreshkin, but as a metaphor for what Putin's policies in Chechnya are doing to Russia as a whole. For example, October's rigged presidential election... MORE

Subsidies from the central government in Moscow for the restoration of Chechnya's social and economic infrastructure are being used to pay suppliers and contractors without any competitive bidding process. A February 17 article by Viktor Semenov in Russky kurier quoted federal auditor Sergei Ryabukhin: "There... MORE

--LIMITED RETURN FOR OSCE TO CHECHNYA The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe may be about to reopen its office in Chechnya--but will have difficulty reviving its human rights monitoring. In a joint press conference in Moscow on February 17, Russian Foreign Minister Igor... MORE

What awaits the refugees now living in Ingushetia if the administration of Russian President Vladimir Putin succeeds in its stated goal of getting all of them to return to Chechnya by March? Anna Politkovskaya reported in the February 16 issue of Novaya gazeta on her... MORE

Since the February 6 Moscow subway bombing, the Putin administration has dug in its heels against the very idea of negotiating with the Maskhadov government. Putin declared on the day of the attack that “it’s not the first time that we encounter a synchronization of... MORE