On December 8, Lord Frank Judd of the United Kingdom and Rudolf Bindig of Germany arrived in Moscow for a visit which was intended to help prepare a late January meeting of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) which, among other agenda... MORE

The organization Polish Humanitarian Action, which is providing aid to Chechnya, recently reported: "The biggest problem for the almost 80,000 residents of Grozny [Djohar] is the coming winter. The majority of the twenty working hospitals and health points and forty-five schools and daycare centers do... MORE

The December 14 issue of Nezavisimaya gazeta, an influential Russian daily, carried an article entitled "The State, Politics and Separatism," authored by Ruslan Khasbulatov, a former speaker of the Russian parliament (until October 1993), and one of the best-known Chechens living in Russia. The subtitle... MORE

In a move indicating that the Russian leadership remains firmly committed to prosecuting the war in Chechnya, it was announced on December 8 that mobile units of Russian internal troops and other personnel of the Ministry of Internal Affairs are to be quartered in "200... MORE

On December 5, Boris Nemtsov, leader of the Union of Right Forces faction in the Russian State Duma, met with President Putin and presented his proposals for a political settlement to the conflict in Chechnya. Nemtsov declined to reveal the details of the conversation but... MORE

In an interview with Izvestia on December 2, Tom Trier of the Danish Refugee Council, described by the newspaper as "the most influential international humanitarian organization currently active in Chechnya," cited statistics concerning the population of Chechnya. Some of these figures have been mentioned previously... MORE

On December 5, in the Chechen settlement of Gehki, located in Urus-Martan District, there was an apparent attempt to kill the pro-Moscow Chechen mayor of Djohar, Bislan Gantamirov. A band of 100-120 heavily armed men broke into his house located in the settlement, but Gantamirov... MORE

On December 5, as has been widely reported, the Russian Federation introduced a visa requirement for citizens of Georgia seeking to enter Russia. This development immediately complicated the lives of an estimated 650,000 Georgians living in Russia, and prevented large numbers of Georgian truckdrivers from... MORE