At the beginning of February, Vakhtang Shamiladze, chairman of the subcommittee of the Georgian parliament for relations with the peoples of the North Caucasus, urged publicly that the estimated 7,500 Chechen refugees currently living in the Pankisi Gorge in northeastern Georgia be forcibly returned to... MORE

On February 5, Boris Nemtsov, leader of the Union of Right Forces faction in the State Duma and a Duma deputy speaker, had a meeting with President Putin during which he presented his new plan for regulating the conflict in Chechnya. The following day, 6... MORE

Writing in the no. 5 (2001) issue of Obshchaya gazeta, journalist Bakhtiyar Akhmedkhanov reported that FSB operatives who, as a result of President Putin's recent decree, have been sent from all over Russia to district FSB headquarters located in Chechnya, are experiencing difficulties. "The work... MORE

On January 27, Kommersant daily published an interview with the president of Chechnya, Aslan Maskhadov. In his comments, Maskhadov noted that he had been elected, in accord with the Chechen constitution, to a five-year presidential term on January 27, 1997 and that his powers therefore... MORE

Writing in the no. 5 (2001) issue of Moskovskie novosti, Andrei Grachev, a former foreign policy advisor to President Mikhail Gorbachev, commented scathingly on the recent session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. "Several years ago," Grachev recalled, "they [the Europeans] were... MORE

On January 31, Russian state television (RTR) broadcast a statement by Vladimir Elagin, the newly appointed minister for coordinating the activity of the federal organs of power for the socio-economic development of the Chechen Republic. "We need," Elagin asserted, "to return the refugees [from Ingushetia... MORE

On February 4, it was announced that U.S. aid worker Kenneth Gluck had been set free after having been kidnapped and held for three weeks in Chechnya. The organization "Doctors without Borders" confirmed the fact of Gluck's release (Reuters, February 4; see also the Monitor,... MORE

On January 30, Colonel General Valery Manilov, deputy chief of staff of the Russian Armed Forces, categorically denied that the Russian military contingent serving in Chechnya was to undergo significant cuts. Manilov emphasized that "a 50 or 25 percent reduction in force size is simply... MORE

The Russian Committee of Soldiers' Mothers has announced its latest findings concerning Russian military and MVD losses incurred during the present "counterterrorist operation"--6,500 deaths in total. The committee also drew attention to a flagrant violation of Russian law: under-aged youths, who are legally not subject... MORE