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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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