Though Kadyrov can presently count on a tame parliament within Chechnya--as Putin can in Russia as a whole--he seems to dislike even the external forms of parliamentary government with its checks and balances. According to a January 14 article by Ivan Sukhov in Vremya novostei,... MORE

Rightist presidential candidate Irina Khakamada launched her campaign this week with a surprisingly strong attack on the incumbent Putin over Chechnya. Raising issues that the Kremlin clearly wants to keep out of any public forum, she said that she is convinced that the hostage takers... MORE

Valery Solovei has written a stinging commentary on Putin's Chechnya policies for the January 16 issue of Rodnaya gazeta. Here is a slightly abridged version: "The war...has not ended and shows no signs of ending. There has not even taken place the [usual] seasonal reduction... MORE

The administration of Akhmad Kadyrov is now hinting that international humanitarian organizations may be forbidden to continue operating in Chechnya or Ingushetia. According to a January 10 report by Itar-Tass, the administration's vice premier, Bilkhis Baidaev, said in an interview with that news agency that... MORE

Indeed, as had been predicted by several human rights activists, pressures are now intensifying on Chechen refugees to leave the shelters that have housed them in Ingushetia. According to a January 8 report on the website Prava cheloveka v Rossii ("Human Rights in Russia"), refugees... MORE

In a major scoop, the Moscow daily Nezavisimaya gazeta finds that Kadyrov has now won the final round of his long campaign to see to it that every major political appointee in Chechnya will be someone personally dependent on himself. Two of the newspaper's correspondents,... MORE

The Russian military will not give up without a fight to counter Akhmad Kadyrov's push to place all police forces within Chechnya under the control of his own administration. In an interview published on January 9, the ultra-nationalist Moscow journal Zavtra ("Tomorrow") asked General Valery... MORE

As political life in Moscow revives with the end of the December-January holiday season, a leading topic of discussion among Chechnya-watchers is Kadyrov's surprise appointment of Umar Dzhabrailov as one of the republic's representatives in the upper house of the federal parliament (see Chechnya Weekly,... MORE

Dissident Russian lawyer and former KGB/FSB officer Mikhail Trepashkin has been transferred to a prison cell with more normal living conditions. But a Moscow military court has rejected his defense counsel's petition to drop the criminal case against him. According to the website Prava cheloveka... MORE

If Vladimir Putin does not make major changes in his Chechnya policies after his expected reelection in March, many political pundits will be embarrassed. Among them is Aleksei Malashenko of the Moscow Carnegie Center. In a recent interview with Maksim Shevchenko of the journal Smysl... MORE