The no. 26 (April 11) issue of Novaya Gazeta contains a piece entitled "The Constitution of Russia Does Not Cover the Children of Chechnya," authored by award-winning war correspondent Anna Politkovskaya, in which she interviewed Oleg Zhaba, the official Representative for the Rights of Children... MORE

On April 2, the North Caucasus Directorate of the Russian Prosecutor General's Office disclosed the names of several Russian citizens who had fought in Afghanistan on the Taliban side and were being kept at the Guantanamo U.S. military base in Cuba. Two of the captives,... MORE

On April 1, Interfax reported that the head of the pro-Moscow interim Chechen administration, Akhmad Kadyrov, had become a victim of arbitrariness on the part of Russian federal troops stationed in Gudermes District in Chechnya. "Kadyrov's spokesman Lecha Yakhyaev," Interfax related, "told the press that... MORE

On April 3, the U.S.-supported Radio Liberty began broadcasting to Russia in the Chechen language. The decision to commence Chechen broadcasting, pushed through by Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, had been adopted last year by the U.S. Congress. "Inhabitants of the North Caucasus," the... MORE

In what appeared to be a clear violation of instructions issued last week by Lieutenant General Vladimir Moltenskoi, commander of the Combined Group of Russian Forces in Chechnya, some 300 Chechen civilians were detained during a search operation conducted in the village of Tsotsin-Yurt between... MORE

In an unexpected development, an official Russian government newspaper, Rossiiskaya Gazeta, in its March 30 issue, published a lengthy interview with Aleksandr Litvinenko, a former lieutenant colonel in the FSB, who recently received political asylum in Great Britain. Some excerpts: Interviewer: "You took part in... MORE

On April 4, Gazeta.ru reported on the first session of a new public commission to investigate the explosions of the apartment houses in Moscow and Volgodonsk in the fall of 1999. Fifteen persons are members of the new commission, including five deputies of the State... MORE

British correspondent Ian Traynor authored a report appearing in the March 28 issue of The Guardian (London)on a new Russian TV series entitled "Spetsnaz," which had premiered on state television during prime time the previous evening: "[The] episode," Traynor wrote, "had a bunch of Russian... MORE

On April 2, the court of the North Caucasus Military District declared yet another recess in the trial of Colonel Yury Budanov, charged with the murder of an 18-year-old Chechen woman, El'za Kungaeva. The trial, which began in February of 2001, will resume on May... MORE