The rigging of elections in Akhmad Kadyrov's Chechnya has long since ceased to be a surprise. The latest example: Russia's election authorities now admit that the number of votes counted there and in Ingushetia for the December 7 parliamentary elections was actually greater than the... MORE

The most useful document for a Chechen trying to get through a military checkpoint as quickly as possible is a membership card in the pro-Putin United Russia party. That was one of the discoveries made by Tatiana Lokshina of the Moscow Helsinki Group during her... MORE

Lokshina found Grozny to be genuinely more peaceful than it had been two months earlier: "The night was quiet, almost without gunfire....no comparison with October." She saw this as a sign that "during these two months much has changed. The war has ended, but in... MORE

Relations between Moscow and Chechnya have been so painful for most of the last two centuries that we too easily forget that there has been a positive side. At the rank-and-file level, Slavs and Chechens have often managed to live as good neighbors and friends.... MORE

The average Russian is increasingly likely to favor peace negotiations rather than a military solution to the Chechen conflict. But he has at the same time become more likely to agree with the Kremlin line that peaceful life is already returning to Chechnya. These seemingly... MORE

The Moscow daily Nezavisimaya gazeta, usually skeptical of the official line on Chechnya, accused rebel guerrillas of assassinating mayors and other local district heads in an article published on December 17. On the previous day rebels had killed Nurdi Elmurzaev, mayor of the village of... MORE

Authorities in Ingushetia succeeded on December 21 in thwarting a mass demonstration against the proposed unification of that republic with Chechnya, according to a December 23 report by Timur Aliev for Prague Watchdog. The police blocked access to Soglasiya Square in the Ingush capital of... MORE

On December 19 the human rights center Memorial published a detailed account of a raid on Chechen civilians in Grozny's Lenin district. The victims of the attack were residents of one of the Kadyrov administration's temporary resettlement centers for new returnees from Ingushetia. These are... MORE

--CONTROVERSIAL BOOK IS CONFISCATED The FSB and Moscow police have confiscated several thousand copies of Aleksandr Litvinenko's book, "The FSB Explodes Russia," according to Aleksandr Podrabinek, editor in chief of the Prima information agency. Podrabinek told the radio station Ekho Moskvy that his agency had... MORE

Akhmad Kadryov spends relatively little time in his presidential office in Grozny, according to a report by Anna Politkovskaya in the November 20 issue of Novaya gazeta. His life is mostly spent either at his "house-fortress" in his home village in eastern Chechnya's Kurchaloi district,... MORE