The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, a former president of Ireland, has announced that she will not be seeking a second term and will step down in September when her four-year term ends. Russian diplomats did not attempt to conceal both their... MORE

On March 24, car bombs took the lives of twenty-three persons and wounded 153 in the towns of Mineral'nye Vody and Essentuki (both in Stavropol' Krai) and in a village near Cherkessk in the autonomous republic of Karachaevo-Cherkessia (RIA Novosti, March 30). Russian government spokesmen... MORE

On March 29--the day after Vladimir Putin had announced major personnel changes within the Russian power ministries--he met with the members of the newly recast Security Council, whose secretary is now Vladimir Rushailo, formerly the Russian minister of internal affairs. (For a detailed biography of... MORE

On March 22, four leading Russian dailies--Izvestia, Komsomol'skaya pravda, Moskovsky Komsomolets and Trud--published the transcript of a lengthy interview with President Putin conducted by the chief editors of those newspapers. During the course of the interview, the Russian president suggested that the conflict in Chechnya... MORE

On March 22, General Aleksandr Zdanovich, chief spokesman of the FSB for issues relating to the war in Chechnya, said that, in the period since the FSB had received the responsibility to head up the counterterrorist operation in Chechnya, there had been a change in... MORE

On March 19, President Putin signed a decree creating a new presidential Information Department, which is to be integrated into the Kremlin administration. Receiving a promotion to be the head of this new department was the Kremlin's chief spokesman for issues relating to Chechnya, Sergei... MORE

Vnukovo Airlines flight attendant Yulia Fomina, who was accidentally killed by Saudi commandos when they stormed a Russian plane sitting on the tarmac in Medina which had been hijacked by three Chechens armed with a single kitchen knife and a cell phone which they said... MORE

The well-known military journalist Pavel Felgenhauer recently suggested that there might be less to the announced withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya than meets the eye. According to official sources, he noted, there are now approximately 80,000 Russian troops in Chechnya, about 40,000 of which... MORE

The latest report of the Lam Center for Pluralism, a human rights organization based in Djohar (Grozny) and Nazran, Ingushetia which works closely with the Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe, describes in its latest report conditions in the mountain region of Chechnya. Living conditions... MORE