In an article entitled "Dekkushev against Gochiyaev," journalist Ol'ga Pashkova wrote in the July 25 issue of the website Politcom.ru: "Over the past week, two important events occurred that directly touched upon the Moscow bombings of the fall of 1999. In accord with Russian-Georgian agreements,... MORE

On July 18, during the course of a "cleansing operation," armed men from the federal forces based in Chechnya unlawfully broke down a locked door and then entered the reception area of the Grozny (Djohar) office of the leading Russian human rights organization Memorial. Only... MORE

The same day the armed incursion occurred, Memorial published a list of the names of 447 persons who had been taken into custody by the federal forces and had then been either directly murdered by them or had "disappeared." In addition to the full name... MORE

The July 19 issue of the newspaper Novye Izvestia, under the headline "Chechen Boomerang," carried the text of a lengthy interview with retired MVD general Aslambek Aslakhanov, the elected deputy from Chechnya to the Russian State Duma. Aslakhanov described to correspondent Said Bitsoev what he... MORE

In the July 15 (no. 50) issue of Novaya Gazeta, award-winning Russian war correspondent Anna Politkovskaya profiled Malika Umazheva, the pro-Moscow chief of administration of the Chechen settlement of Alkhan-Kala who had been elected to that post in July of 2001 by the residents of... MORE

The July 16 issue of Moskovskie Novosti contains an interview by the well-known journalist Sanobar Shermatova with Professor Ruslan Khasbulatov, a former speaker of the Russian parliament and an ethnic Chechen. Khasbulatov had drafted and published a "Peace Plan for the Chechen Republic" after which... MORE

Leading Russian human rights spokesmen have voiced strong reservations about the recent appointment of Abdul-Khakim Sultygov, a 40-year-old ethnic Chechen, as President Putin's new special representative for human rights in Chechnya. The chairman of Memorial, Oleg Orlov, for example, doubted that Sultygov would have any... MORE

On July 12, the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees issued a statement in which it questioned the recent closing by Russia of two camps for IDPs located in Znamenskoe in northern Chechnya. "When Severny and Yuzhny... were closed last week," the UNHCR... MORE

On July 16, the website of the pro-Moscow Chechen administration announced that "the draft of a new constitution for the Chechen Republic will be presented to a [popular] referendum in November of 2002" (Kavkaz.strana.ru, July 16). On July 17, however, a deputy prime minister of... MORE