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Latest North Caucasus Weekly Articles
INTERIOR MINISTRY HELIOCOPTER CRASHES.
At about 11:30 a.m. on Sunday, January 27, a Mi-8 helicopter belonging to the Russian Interior Ministry exploded in mid-air while en route from the Chechen capital to the northern Chechen village of Shelkovskaya. It was about four kilometers from reaching its destination when it... MORE
RADIO LIBERTY’S LICENSE MAY BE IN QUESTION.
On January 28, Russian presidential spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky announced that the Russian government planned to follow Radio Liberty's coverage of the Chechen conflict closely and might choose to revoke the U.S.-funded station's license to broadcast in Russia if it saw the programming as pro-separatist (Moscow... MORE
MASKHADOV’S TERM EXPIRES.
On January 27, the five-year presidential term of Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov expired. Maskhadov had been elected to office in January 1997 in a vote judged free and fair by international observers. In an interview with Ekho Moskvy Radio, a leading separatist spokesman, Mairbek... MORE
ZAKAEV VISITS FRANCE AND ITALY.
On January 25, Akhmed Zakaev, a deputy prime minister in the Chechen separatist government and a special representative of Aslan Maskhadov, was received at both the French Foreign Ministry and the French National Education Ministry. Zakaev met with the deputy director of the Foreign Ministry's... MORE
HELMS ON PUTIN’S BROKEN PROMISES.
On January 29, Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, Ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, met in Washington with Ilyas Akhmadov, foreign minister of Chechnya's separatist government. Helms declared inter alia: "Thanks to the broken promises of Vladimir Putin, Russia continues to brutalize the... MORE
VERSHBOW INTERVIEWED, EMPHASIZES NEGOTIATIONS.
The January 31 issue of the newspaper Kommersant featured an interview with U.S. ambassador to Moscow Alexander Vershbow. Several of the questions posed touched on the conflict in Chechnya. Asked how the United States saw the future of Chechnya, Vershbow responded: "We prefer not to... MORE
POLL SAYS RUSSIANS WANT NEGOTIATIONS.
On February 1 at 10:48 p.m., the website Presscenter.ru, citing a report concerning a recent poll taken by VTsIOM, the results of which had just been aired over Ekho Moskvy Radio, wrote: "More than half of Russians [rossiyan] believe that it is necessary to begin... MORE
MOPPING UP OPERATIONS JUST AS BAD AS MILITARY ONES.
The January 31 issue of Novye Izvestia carried an article entitled "From One 'Mopping Up Operation' to the Next," authored by journalist Zoya Svetova, devoted to the recent cleansing operations conducted by Russian forces in Chechnya. "As distinct from the Strasbourg parliamentarians," Svetova wrote, "human... MORE
WHITHER THE RUSSIAN REFUGEES?
On February 1, Vladimir Kalamanov, the Russian presidential special human rights representative for Chechnya, called for a "return" of the ethnic Russian and Russian-language populace to Chechnya. "The [Russian] state," Kalamanov said, "owes an enormous debt to the Russian refugees, 200,000 persons, who left Chechnya... MORE
RUSHAILO-SHEVARDNADZE AGREE ON CHECHEN REFUGEES.
On January 30, the secretary of the Russian Security Council, Vladimir Rushailo, completed an official visit to Georgia. During his meeting with President Eduard Shevardnadze, it was agreed that "in the near future a delegation of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations will come to... MORE