The renewed heavy fighting in Chechnya has sparked a broad-scale exodus of Chechen refugees--the largest "since February of 2000"--from the Chechen capital and other cities to northern districts of the republic, and to the already filled-to-overflowing refugee camps in neighboring Ingushetia (Utro.ru, September 20). The... MORE

On September 18, the head of the pro-Moscow Chechen civilian administration, Akhmad Kadyrov, left on a six-day tour of four Middle Eastern countries to meet with state officials and members of the Chechen diaspora in those countries and also to appeal for financial and material... MORE

On the night of September 19-20, a close associate of Akhmad Kadyrov, the head of the pro-Moscow police force in Kurchaloi, Salman Abuev, was killed in an ambush as they were travelling by car from Kurchaloi to Alleroi. Six other men in the vehicle, all... MORE

Reporting on a series of interviews conducted with Kremlin advisers and political allies of President Vladimir Putin, journalist Susan Glasser wrote concerning what Russia hoped to obtain from the United States in exchange for cooperating with its war on terrorism: "Russia's demands [to the United... MORE

Evidence continued to mount concerning the high degree of importance that both Russia and the Chechen separatists ascribe to the views of the leadership of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). Aleksei Vasin, an advisor to the pro-Moscow prime minister of Chechnya,... MORE

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has sent a tough, even brutal note to the Georgian government concerning an alleged Chechen terrorist presence on Georgian territory. The ministry prepared a detailed summary of the note and posted it on the official Russian government website Rosinformtsentr... MORE

Russian media offered extensive coverage of the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. A number of Russian commentators remarked that they believed that the international community would now be considerably more understanding toward the Russian war effort in Chechnya. "As for Chechnya,"... MORE

The September 13 issue of the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets carried an emotional statement by Boris Nemtsov, one of the leaders of the Union of Right Forces faction in the State Duma, which indicated that he had changed his position from a "dove" to a "hawk"... MORE

The Russian minister of defense, Sergei Ivanov, underlined on September 12 that the Russian army is in Chechnya "once and for all, and irrevocably. All of the basic units of the Combined Group of Forces," he emphasized, "will never leave the republic." The task at... MORE