In the no. 17 (March 12) and no. 18 (March 15) issues of the pro-democracy weekly, Novaya gazeta, award-winning Russian war correspondent Anna Politkovskaya described crimes committed by members of the Russian military against their fellow soldiers. Today ethnic Russians, she observes in her essay... MORE

On March 8, it was announced that the number of unburied bodies found scattered about an abandoned dacha complex less than a kilometer away from Russia's chief military base in Chechnya, Khankala, had risen to sixty (Agence France Presse, March 8). An official with the... MORE

An episode which the newspaper Nezavisimaya gazeta (March 6) termed "unprecedented" occurred at the beginning of March in the Chechen settlement of Dzhalka, located on the railroad line linking two major cities--Djohar and Gudermes. On March 2, the local FSB conducted a nocturnal raid on... MORE

According to the chief military procurator of Russia, General Mikhail Kislitsyn, seven Russian soldiers have to date received sentences for crimes committed during the 1999-2001 "counterterrorist operation." An additional fifty-eight investigations into possible crimes have been initiated (Russkaya mysl, March 8). In a recent interview... MORE

On March 6, the newspaper Izvestia reported that the procuracy of the North Caucasus Military District had completed an examination of several thousand complaints concerning the nonpayment of so-called "battle wages" to Russian contract soldiers who had seen action in Chechnya. Last September, retired army... MORE

The no. 16 (March 5-11) issue of the weekly Novaya Gazeta contains a piece by the well-known war correspondent Anna Politkovskaya concerning conversations she had with three eighteen-year-old soldiers who had sought her out in mid-February while she was momentarily alone at a paratroop base... MORE

On March 4, the first conference of Chechen refugees residing in Ingushetia was held in the Ingush village of Ordzhonokidzievskaya. The chairman of the conference's organization committee, Ruslan Budalov, noted that there are 170,000 Chechen refugees currently living in Ingushetia. The delegates to the conference... MORE

On March 7 a group of twenty-two humanitarian and human rights organizations called on U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft to grant Temporary Protective Status (TPS) to Chechens living in the United States. The intention behind the awarding of this status is to prevent the forced... MORE

The March 7 issue of the newspaper Segodnya contained an interview with the former Russian minister of internal affairs, retired General Anatoly Kulikov, who is currently chairman of the subcommittee of the State Duma for legislation in the sphere of the struggle with transnational crime... MORE