In response to a query from the Jamestown Foundation, the Press and Public Information Office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) replied on October 30: "For the time being, no decision has been taken as to when the OSCE would return... MORE

Last week we examined the situation of approximately 170,000 refugees from Chechnya who are now preparing for winter in the small republic of Ingushetiya, adjacent to war-torn Chechnya. It will be recalled that influential Russian political and military leaders have advocated that all of those... MORE

noted further that 715,065 (97.44 percent) of the registered populace were ethnic Chechens, demonstrating that the republic has become a mono-ethnic entity. The number of ethnic Russians now living in Chechnya was estimated by the Danish organizations as "lower than 10,000" (a figure incommensurate with... MORE

In an interview with French journalists published in Le Figaro on October 26 (and carried in Russian by Gazeta.ru on October 27), Russian president Vladimir Putin offered a combative and, at times, emotional defense of Russia's "anti-terrorist" military operation in Chechnya. "Shamil Basaev," Putin began... MORE

In contrast to these aggressively confident statements by Russia's political and military leadership, there is the reality being experienced on the ground by the troops of the Russian Defense Ministry and Ministry of Internal Affairs. In the no. 42 issue of Moskovskie novosti, military journalist... MORE

This week we examine the predicament of Chechen refugees living in Ingushetiya, a tiny autonomous republic of the Russian Federation, with an indigenous population of slightly over 300,000, which shares a border with war-ravaged Chechnya. (A future report will focus upon the fate of Chechen... MORE

There are indications that the Russian military may be planning to pull out of Chechnya (that is, presumably, out of that part of the Chechen Republic which lies south of the Terek River) over the course of the next three months. General Viktor Kazantsev, the... MORE

In what has been interpreted by some commentators as another sign of the weakening of Russia's hold on Chechnya, it has been announced on that Russia's central administration in the republic will be moved thirty kilometers from Chechnya's second city, Gudermes, back to the ruined... MORE