On January 11, the new chairman-in-office of the fifty-five-member Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Romanian Foreign Minister Mircea Dan Geoana, pledged during a visit to Vienna to make Chechnya and the Balkans his key priorities during Bucharest's twelve months in charge of... MORE

The January 18 issue of the weekly Obshchaya gazeta carried an informative report by journalist Bakhtiyar Akhmedkhanov, who recently spent time with both the Russian military and the Chechen separatists in Chechnya. A Russian officer told the journalist that even if the federal forces succeeded... MORE

The January 15 issue of the weekly Novaya gazeta featured a piece by a well-known journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, devoted to the recent kidnapping in Chechnya of American citizen Kenneth Gluck, head of the North Caucasus mission of Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF-Doctors without Borders). Villages like... MORE

On January 14-17, two monitors of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Lord Frank Judd of Britain and Rudolf Bindig of Germany, visited the North Caucasus region and the Republic of Chechnya. They were in Chechnya proper from January 15-17. While in Chechnya,... MORE

On January 14, two monitors from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Lord Frank Judd of Great Britain and Rudolf Bindig of Germany, flew from Moscow to the North Caucasus region to assess Russia's human rights record in Chechnya. On January 22-26,... MORE

On January 9, Kenneth (Kenny) Gluck, age 38, an American citizen working for the North Caucasus mission of the Nobel-prize winning humanitarian organization Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF--Doctors without Borders) was kidnapped by three heavily armed masked men near the Chechen village of Starye Atagi as... MORE

In an interview published in the army newspaper Krasnaya zvezda on 10 January, Colonel General Gennady Troshev, commander of the North Caucasus Military District, asserted belligerently: "It is necessary to take a detailed look at who is living in the camps for forced migrants. There... MORE

The January 11 issue of the newspaper Moskovsky komsomolets carries a report by two journalists who recently visited both Djohar (Grozny) and the large Russian base located at Khankala on the outskirts of the city. The reporters note that, in general, the Russian media--both television... MORE