On January 22, Russian Deputy Interior Minister General Ivan Golubev told a press conference in Moscow that the ongoing "antiterrorist operation" has, since the fall of 1999, cost the internal troops and other forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs 2,700 dead and more than... MORE

It has been announced that a former Chechen field commander, Salautdin Temirbulatov, aged 39, is to stand trial in Kabardino-Balkariya for "war crimes"--that is, the execution, captured on videotape, of four Russian contract soldiers--committed in April 1996 during the previous conflict. He is the first... MORE

How do ethnic Chechens living in the Republic of Chechnya get their information? In an interview with the website Utro, Shamil Beno, the pro-Moscow plenipotentiary representative of the Chechen Republic to the Kremlin, recently noted: "We conducted sociological research which found...that more than 20 percent... MORE

As reported last week, on January 22 Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev was to be placed in charge of the entire "counterterrorist operation" being conducted in Chechnya. As Putin's decree of that day mandated, all of the Russian "power ministries"--the... 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