An ethnic Chechen, Abdul-Khakim Sultygov, was named on July 12 as the new special representative of the Russian president for human rights in Chechnya. Sultygov had been working as the secretary of the joint working group of the Duma and the Parliamentary Assembly of the... MORE

More than 6 million rubles earmarked for Chechnya from the federal budget for the restoration of housing, an official Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported on July 10, have been embezzled by a thirty-year-old resident of Alkhan-Kala. In April 2001, the accused had concluded an... MORE

On July 9, Gazeta.ru reported that, three days previously, the eleventh annual session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe had opened in Berlin. "The OSCE parliamentarians' attack on the [Russian] antiterror campaign," the website wrote, "proved to be... MORE

On July 10, it was reported that Lord Judd of PACE had arrived in Moscow for meetings of the joint Duma-PACE working group on Chechnya. Judd and the leader of the Duma delegation, Dmitry Rogozin, were scheduled to have talks at the Russian Procurator General's... MORE

The well-known French journalist Anne Nivat, whose book "Chienne de Guerre: A Woman Reporter Behind the Lines of the War in Chechnya" (Public Affairs, 2001), has been translated into seven languages, recently returned from a three-week visit to Chechnya. As is her usual practice, she... MORE

There is mounting evidence that Russian forces in Chechnya increasingly find themselves at war with young Chechen adolescents. In an interview in the July 1 issue of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, a former high-ranking Russian official, Ivan Rybkin, sought to explain what had induced him to publish... MORE

During a visit to Chechnya to investigate recent "cleansing operations" conducted in the villages of Mesker-Yurt (in May) and Chechen-Aul (in June), the well-known Russian war correspondent Anna Politkovskaya also touched upon the theme of children. She talked with a Chechen mother whose eight-year-old son,... MORE

In her article, Politkovskaya noted, almost in passing, that the Russian forces in Chechnya have revived an ancient and cruel form of torture and execution: crucifixion. "They wanted to crucify Sharpuddi," she wrote, "as they had done with another man before him, by nailing him... MORE

On July 2, the website Grani.ru reported, "After a year and a half of considering the case of [Colonel Yury] Budanov, on July 2 the court of the North Caucasus Military District, instead of passing a sentence, announced a decision to renew a judicial investigation... MORE