The hopes of Mikhail Khodarenok's Defense Ministry sources to rely more and more on small, highly mobile units of spetsnaz commandos seemed, by the end of June, to be increasingly misdirected. In direct contradiction to the analysis of these military experts, the rebels are now... MORE

Comite Tchetchenie, Tchetchenie: Dix cles pour comprendre ("Chechnya: Ten Keys for Understanding"). Paris, La Decouverte, 9 bis, rue Abel-Hovelacque, 75013 Paris (www.editionsladecouverte.fr). ISBN 2-7071-3997-1 125 pages. Price: 6.4 Euros (@US$ 7.35). The situation in Chechnya is changing so rapidly that even the best books soon... MORE

"ZACHISTKI" IN INGUSHETIA The federal forces now seem to have transferred to Ingushetia the large scale "zachistki" security sweeps that earlier terrorized civilians in Chechnya (see Chechnya Weekly, June 19). Dmitry Grushkin of the Moscow-based human rights center Memorial told Radio Liberty that these raids... MORE

HOUSING "RESTORATION" IN GROZNY Anna Politkovskaya of Novaya gazeta recently visited an apartment house in Grozny that the Kadyrov administration likes to display as an example of the restoration work that it has been doing with federal subsidies. She found that the building's yard had... MORE

A band of unidentified attackers murdered the head of the council of elders in the village of Vashindaroi in Chechnya's Shatoi district during the night of June 26-27. They burst into the elder's home at about 2:00 a.m., dragged him out onto the street and... MORE

Akhmad Kadyrov's son, Zelimkhan, still faces the possibility of a prison sentence of four to seven years for public disorderliness in the south Russian city of Kislovodsk. He was arrested there on June 5 and accused of taking part in a gunfight. Russian television news... MORE

Score the latest round of the Zakaev extradition case as a win for the defense. The London court hearing, due to resume on June 30, will decide Britain's response to Russia's demand for the extradition of Akhmed Zakaev, a key diplomat and spokesman for Chechnya's... MORE

Salambek Maigov, the official Moscow representative of the Maskhadov separatist government, plans to visit the United States in mid-July. The visit will be another in a series of foreign trips and meetings with journalists and government officials outside Russia. The Russian government has been surprisingly... MORE

The next struggle between Akhmad Kadyrov and the federal center will be over control of Chechnya's economic resources, especially oil. On June 21 the Chechen media published Kadyrov's proposed draft of a treaty between Grozny and Moscow demarcating which parts of Chechnya's economic, social and... MORE

CONTROLLING CHECHNYA'S TEMPORARY LEGISLATURE Like Vladimir Putin, Akhmad Kadyrov believes that the right kind of parliament is one that obeys the executive chief. The recent first session of the newly formed State Council of Chechnya, which will function in effect as the republic's legislature until... MORE