On July 13, President Vladimir Putin met with retired MVD General Aslambek Aslakhanov, the elected deputy to the Russian State Duma from Chechnya. Aslakhanov has consistently been a harsh critic of the numerous "mopping up operations" being conducted in the republic by the federal forces.... MORE

In a chilling development, the well-known Russian war correspondent Anna Politkovskaya and Zeinap Gashaeva, the leader of a human rights group based in Ingushetia, have announced that at least twenty-three civilians living in mountain villages in the Vedeno District of Chechnya have been murdered during... MORE

In early July, Russia stepped up its "mopping-up operations" against Chechnya's civilian populace, thereby prompting a new large-scale exodus of refugees into Ingushetia. The operations were conducted in two villages--Sernovodsk and Assinovskaya--located on the border with the Ingush Republic that had previously been designated "safe... MORE

Forty-four Chechen refugees are presently continuing a hunger strike in the camps for forced migrants located in Ingushetia. The hunger strikers have vowed not to eat anything until the Russian government consents to negotiate a settlement to the current conflict with Aslan Maskhadov, the elected... MORE

When, on July 2, President Vladimir Putin hosted a meeting with President Jacques Chirac of France in the Kremlin, he strongly denounced the recent transfer of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague. Chirac replied that, while he understood... MORE

Public support for the Russian war effort in Chechnya appears to be on the wane. A Russia-wide poll taken by the independent research center ROMIR in June found that only 33.7 percent of Russian citizens to one extent or another support the actions of the... MORE

On June 28, a conference provocatively entitled "Islamic Threat or Threat to Islam?" sponsored by the new social-political movement "Eurasia," opened in Moscow. The "Eurasia" movement had itself been founded, with much fanfare, in April of this year. Russian mass media at the time had... MORE

On June 27, the general secretary of the Council of Europe, Walter Schwimmer, criticized the "state of impunity" created in Chechnya due to the pronounced inactivity of the local pro-Moscow judicial organs. Schwimmer underscored that each individual who has infringed basic human rights must be... MORE