Officers of Moscow's special services are increasingly fearful of a bloody new civil war within Chechnya, wrote correspondent Julius Strauss of London's Daily Telegraph on October 6. According to Strauss, Russian intelligence officers who requested anonymity told him that Kadyrov's gunmen will soon be fighting... MORE

In his first major post-election interview, Kadyrov made it clear that he will be seeking a greater share of the income from Chechnya's oil resources, as well as more control over taxes and customs. "Chechnya does not need any special status, the main thing is... MORE

On October 4 the Paris daily Le Monde published the text of an exclusive interview with Aslan Maskhadov, president of Chechnya's underground separatist government. Maskhadov's answers came in the form of an hour-long audiocassette, delivered to a Le Monde correspondent in Russia and responding to... MORE

MASKHADOV "IMPEACHMENT" CLAIM IS DENOUNCED In a counterblow directed at the recent announcement of Aslan Maskhadov's supposed "impeachment," the pro-Maskhadov Chechenpress website published on September 30 a statement rejecting that announcement as having "no legal force." The pro-Maskhadov statement appears over the names of twenty-five... MORE

Russian and Ingush authorities have reached a compromise with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, enabling the former to close one of Ingushetia's five camps for Chechen refugees. According to a September 30 press release from the UN agency, at least some of the... MORE

The organizers of a film festival on Chechnya have accused the Russian secret services of intimidating a movie theater in downtown Moscow into canceling its previous agreement to host the free screenings. Yury Samodurov, head of the Andrei Sakharov Center in the Russian capital, told... MORE

Akhmad Kadyrov is continuing to seek a negotiated settlement with rebel field commander Ruslan Gelaev (see Chechnya Weekly, September 12). Correspondent Olga Allenova of Kommersant happened to visit Kadyrov just as he was bidding farewell to a group of visitors who looked to her like... MORE

by Brian Glyn Williams In 1999, U.S. presidential candidate George Bush spoke for much of the American right when he warned the Russians that they "need to resolve the dispute (with the Chechens) peaceably and not be bombing women and children and causing huge numbers... MORE

U.S. officials evidently gave Akhmad Kadyrov a cold reception during his recent visit to the United States as part of Russia's delegation to the United Nations. Even a September 29 article in Kommersant, which tried to put the best face possible on Kadyrov's trip, acknowledged... MORE

With only days to go before Chechnya's presidential election, the polling service Validata has published the results of a survey conducted in the last week of September. The poll found that 66 percent of respondents said they would cast ballots on October 5. This compared... MORE