Another Putin appointee called on July 22 for an investigation into the financial sources of independent human rights organizations that have criticized Putin's policies in Chechnya. In an interview with Ekho Moskvy, this Kremlin official suggested that such organizations may be connected with international terrorist... MORE

"ZACHISTKI" SAID TO BE INTENSIFYING... Systematic violations of human rights in Chechnya will lead to similar violations across the length and breadth of Russia, human rights activist Lyudmila Alekseeva predicted in an interview with the radio station Ekho Moskvy. The head of the Moscow Helsinki... MORE

Correspondent Ruslan Isaev of Prague Watchdog reported on July 21 that federal servicemen detained eight residents of Grozny's Chernorechnye district, including three girls, in a July 16 "zachistka." According to eyewitnesses, the operation was conducted not by police of the Kadyrov administration but by Russian... MORE

The Putin administration's effort to extradite Akhmed Zakaev--an emissary of Aslan Maskhadov--from the United Kingdom suffered another defeat this month when one of the Kremlin's principal witnesses undermined an accusation previously attributed to him. On July 10 Father Filipp Zhigulin, who was kidnapped seven years... MORE

It is not only the ultra-nationalist Russian media that grumble about the Kadyrov administration's recruitment of former rebel guerrillas. The newly revived Moscow newspaper Novye izvestia, a vocal defender of human rights and a critic of the war in Chechnya, has fingered yet another such... MORE

The new head of the Chechen Republic's OMON special police hinted in an interview published by the website Utro.ru on July 21 that he does not entirely agree with the Kadyrov administration's policy of recruiting former rebel guerrillas into the pro-Moscow security agencies--or at least... MORE

Pro-reform deputies in the Russian parliament hope to force a debate this fall on a legislative proposal that would, as a report in Novye izvestia put it, "place the [Chechen] war...within a certain legal framework." According to the July 8 article by Aleksandr Zhelenin and... MORE

In an interview published in the July 15 issue of Yezhenedelny zhurnal, director Sergei Khaikin of the research center Validata discussed the results of the center's recent polls in Chechnya, which were conducted jointly with the Obshchestvennoe mnenie ("Public Opinion") foundation. Predictably, perhaps, for an... MORE

The experience of cities such as London or Tel Aviv has shown that one can get used to terrorism. Most people go about their daily business almost as if the threat did not exist; after all, for the average civilian the risk of a terrorist... MORE

Six federal servicemen were killed and eight wounded in a firefight in the Chechen highlands' Vedeno district last weekend, the news agency Interfax reported on July 21. A Russian military source told the agency that the firefight began when a group of rebel guerrillas was... MORE