On December 6, the official RIA Novosti press agency reported that only one former hostage from the Dubrovka incident remained in a Moscow hospital. On November 28, however, the website Grani.ru had written that sixty-eight former hostages remained missing without trace.

It was reported on December 7 that Georgia had, that same day, handed over Yusuf Krymshamkhalov to the Russian authorities. Krymshamkhalov, an ethnic Karachai, is charged by Russian procurators with having participated in the September 1999 terror bombings of Moscow and Volgodonsk (Grani.ru, citing Itar-Tass,... MORE

An article entitled "The War in Chechnya," appearing in the December 4 issue of Die Presse (Austria), and posted in Russian translation on Inosmi.ru on the same day, featured the views concerning the Chechen conflict of a leading French philosopher, Andre Glucksmann, who termed Russia's... MORE

In an interview with ORT state television, Aleksandr Veshnyakov, chair of the Russian Central Election Commission, deemed it likely that a referendum on the issue of a new pro-Moscow Chechen constitution would be held in March of 2003 (RIA Novosti, December 5). The following day,... MORE

Malika Umazheva has been murdered," the human rights organization Memorial reported on December 4, "a person well known in Chechnya and beyond its borders, the [former] head of administration of Alkhan-Kala, who boldly opposed the arbitrariness of the [Russian] soldiers in her village." Observing that... MORE

:* Putin slams TV channel coverage* The Dano-Russo sticking point* Closing the Inguish camps* Whither the refugees?* On being a Chechen in Moscow* Perspective: Self-deportation to Kazakhstan? NEWS

In the aftermath of the storming of the Moscow theater at Dubrovka on October 26, Russian authorities commenced a crackdown against two television channels whose coverage of the hostage crisis had evidently deeply angered the Kremlin. "The president [Putin] himself," the website Politcom.ru reported on... MORE

The strain in relations between Russia and Denmark continued over the past several weeks. Russia maintained heavy pressure on Denmark to extradite separatist deputy premier Akhmed Zakaev, who had come to the country to participate in a conference and had then been arrested on October... MORE

On November 27, Russian authorities announced that they intended, by the end of December, to close the "tent cities" located in Ingushetia that now house tens of thousands of Chechen IDPs. (Reuters, November 27). On the same day, Poul Nielson, head of the European Commission's... MORE