On March 26, the mass circulation newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, in an unusual development, published lengthy excerpts from an open letter sent to the "leadership of the country and of the Ministry of Internal Affairs" by members of SOBR UPOP--an elite anti-organized crime MVD spetznaz unit--from... MORE

Yevgeny Primakov, the former Russian prime minister, foreign minister and SVR director, has suggested that Russia adopt the tsarist "Finnish model" in an attempt to foster a settlement to the conflict in Chechnya. On March 11, the Russian website Inosmi.ru carried a Russian translation of... MORE

Of course," Primakov said to Le Monde, "one must offer Chechnya special rights within Russia. Take the example of Finland: During tsarist times, [Finland] was granted an autonomy so broad that the Finns were able not to surrender Russian revolutionaries who had conducted a congress... MORE

In recent comments, leading representatives of the Russian state and of the Chechen separatist leadership have underlined that bilateral negotiations between the two sides have ground to a complete halt. In an interview with Moskovskie Novosti, separatist deputy premier Akhmed Zakaev stated: "After the January... MORE

On March 15, the Public Consultative Council, established under the auspices of the State Duma-Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Working Group on Chechnya, met for the first time in Moscow. The group consisted of some thirty representatives of Chechen factions with widely... MORE

In Moscow for meetings of the Duma-PACE joint Working Group on Chechnya, Lord Judd maintained on March 21 during an interview with Ekho Moskvy Radio: "You can't resolve the situation [in Chechnya] without a political settlement. Maskhadov is the political reality of today's Chechnya. If... MORE

During the course of an interview with the newspaper Novaya Gazeta (no. 20, 21 March), Akhmad Kadyrov, head of the pro-Moscow Chechen administration, complained that recent harsh repressive actions by the Russian power structures in Chechnya were de facto serving to replenish the ranks of... MORE

On March 14, Associated Press writer Judith Ingram reported the results of a poll released earlier that day by the well-known Russian polling institute ROMIR: "Of 2,000 people surveyed in February, 37 percent said they supported the war and 48 percent said they did not.... MORE

In an editorial appearing in its March 22 edition, the Times of London wrote that, on the previous day, Anna Politkovskaya, a well-known war correspondent who writes for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, had been presented with the prestigious Index on Censorship award for "the most... MORE

documentary film, entitled "An Assassination Attempt against Russia," sponsored by oligarch-in-exile Boris Berezovsky, which was unveiled at a press conference in London on March 5, continued to create ripple effects in Russia. On March 10, Sergei Yushenkov, a State Duma deputy and cofounder of the... MORE