Is there a plan afoot to recombine Chechnya and Ingushetia into a single republic? The former president of Ingushetia, Ruslan Aushev, who is now a member of the Russian Federation Council, "expressed himself categorically against the idea of the deputy of the State Duma Aslambek... MORE

Writing on January 30 for the website of the pro-Moscow Chechen administration, Kavkaz.strana.ru, Kheda Khasmagomedova reported that "child mortality in Chechnya remains high--according to various estimates it stands at about 35 percent." It would be even higher, she observed, were it not for "the enormous... MORE

In an interview summarized in the February 1 issue of the New York Times, oligarch-in-exile Boris Berezovsky underscored that "he was just weeks away from laying out documentary evidence that Russia's security services were involved in apartment-house explosions in September 1999 that killed 300 people"... MORE

In "A Stable but Tense Chechnya," an article appearing in the January 26 issue of Novoe Voennoe Obozrenie, military journalist Mikhail Khodarenok, a leading "hawk" on the subject of the war in Chechnya, describes the current situation in the republic as offering grounds for cautious... MORE

On January 23, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), meeting in Strasbourg, devoted one of the sessions of its five-day winter assembly to the situation in Chechnya. Journalist Anton Chernykh summarized the session's proceedings on the pages of Kommersant: "Having remarked that... MORE

The appearance of Akhmed Zakaev, a deputy premier in the Chechen separatist government and a personal representative of President Maskhadov, created a considerable stir at the PACE meetings. In an interview with Kommersant (January 23 issue), Zakaev noted that, on December 19, Lord Russell-Johnston, then... MORE

Before arriving in Strasbourg, Zakaev had visited Britain, where he had been invited to the Foreign Office for discussions and had also been given an opportunity to hold a press conference at the House of Parliament. On January 21, Roderic Lyne, the British ambassador to... MORE

In similar fashion, on January 25, Russia's Foreign Ministry harshly criticized the United States for a meeting held on January 23 between Ilyas Akhmadov, the separatists' chief international diplomat, and representatives of the U.S. State Department (Russia Journal, January 25). In his response to the... MORE

Speaking at the annual general assembly of the Academy of Military Sciences in Moscow on January 22, General of the Army Anatoly Kvashnin, chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, reported that "in Chechnya today there are present 86,000 soldiers and employees... MORE