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

On December 9, President Vladimir Putin presented awards to Russian journalists-most of them employed by the state-owned television network RTR-for their "objective coverage" of the war in Chechnya. By "objective" the Russian president clearly meant coverage which favored and supported the Russian military campaign (Agence... MORE

On December 15, Russian armed forces chief of staff Anatoly Kvashnin announced that the combined military and MVD task force in Chechnya would be taking their troops out of the safety of army bases and deploying them in small contingents throughout the republic. This decision,... MORE

In early December, former Russian Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin, who now heads up the Accounting Chamber of Russia (the rough equivalent of the U.S. GAO), announced that "he had asked prosecutors to investigate senior [Russian] bureaucrats suspected of misusing vast sums of reconstruction cash" destined... MORE

On December 9, negotiations were concluded at the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs concerning a memorandum of mutual understanding between the MVD and an Assistance Group of the OSCE, which wants to be permitted to return to Chechnya. The question of how to ensure the... MORE

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