The September 15 suicide-bombing of the FSB headquarters in Magas, the capital of Ingushetia, produced heavier casualties outside the building than within it, apparently because the car-bomb exploded before the car could burst into the building itself. In addition to the three dead, more than... MORE

Yet another new book has appeared on Chechnya, this one from a veteran Moscow correspondent for a German newspaper. Der Krieg im Schatten. Ru§land und Tschetschenien ("The War in the Shadows: Russia and Chechnya"), edited by Florian Hassel of the Frankfurter Rundschau, presents still further... MORE

The Chechen residents of the increasingly beleaguered Bella refugee camp in Ingushetia had their water cut off on September 19, Agence France-Presse reported on September 20. Following a September 17 electricity cutoff, this new step is clearly designed to place the refugees under even more... MORE

Have Chechen separatist guerrillas been fighting against the United States and its allies in places such as Iraq or Afghanistan--and if so, how many have been captured or killed? The U.S. government has been strikingly passive in seeking to learn (or, at least, in publicly... MORE

In the former Soviet Union, as in the United States, the first week of September is when vacations end and people get back to work. In theory, Chechnya's presidential election campaign is now entering its most intense phase, with the voting less than a month... MORE

Dzhabrailov still has given no clear explanation of his awkward withdrawal--even in a long radio interview he granted with Ekho Moskvy on September 4. Not surprisingly, he rejected the interpretation publicly offered by Khasbulatov and many others--that he had withdrawn because of pressure from the... MORE

Dzhabrailov's September 2 departure from the presidential race left Bislan Gantemirov, his most prominent supporter in Grozny, in an untenable position. Gantemirov had taken the risky step of publicly endorsing Dzhabrailov without resigning from his post as Kadyrov's minister of the press. Not surprisingly, Gantemirov... MORE

Anna Politkovskaya is among those observers who believe that Kadyrov has not yet wrapped up his election victory and that the Kremlin is still keeping other options available. In a September 8 article for Novaya gazeta she wrote that Moscow deliberately chose to tolerate the... MORE

The leaders of Russia's main human rights organizations announced on September 9 that they will not lend legitimacy to the October 5 presidential election by sending observers. Svetlana Gannushkina of Civic Action, Lev Ponomarev of the "For Human Rights" movement and Yury Samodurov of the... MORE

Landmines killed more people in Chechnya last year than in any country in the world, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines announced on September 9. Chechnya also had one of fastest rates of increases in such deaths. The estimated death toll for Chechnya was 5,695,... MORE