On February 23, the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, sent telegrams to the president of Ingushetia, Ruslan Aushev, and the pro-Moscow head of administration of Chechnya, Akhmad Kadyrov, on the occasion of the fifty-seventh anniversary of the deportation of the Ingush and Chechen peoples. Putin... MORE

On February 28, the trial of Colonel Yury Budanov, a tank commander accused of strangling a young Chechen woman, El'za Kungaeva, in late March of 2000, commenced in a military court in Rostov-on-Don, a southern Russian city. "According to specialists [in Russian law]," the newspaper... MORE

The February 28 issue of Nezavisimaya gazeta carried the text of a lengthy interview with Aslan Maskhadov, the separatist president of Chechnya. The newspaper's editors had sent their questions for the Chechen president to his representatives located in "one of the European countries;" a diskette... MORE

The no. 9 (February 27-March 5) issue of Moskovskie Novosti contained an article on the mood of the Russian MVD forces stationed in Chechnya. It was noted that policemen from Bryansk Oblast in Russia who had been assigned to the Shatoi District Department of Internal... MORE

On March 1, the commander of Russian airborne troops, General Georgy Shpak, told RIA Novosti that, "The heads of the bandit formations, Aslan Maskhadov, Shamil Basaev and Khattab, are currently located in Chechnya; Ruslan Gelaev is in Georgia; Shirvani Basaev is receiving medical treatment in... MORE

As has been pointed out in previous issues of this newsletter, the Putin leadership has been keenly interested in improving relations with the Council of Europe, a forty-three-nation body which, significantly, does not include the United States as a member. The visit of the Council... MORE

On March 8, it was announced that the number of unburied bodies found scattered about an abandoned dacha complex less than a kilometer away from Russia's chief military base in Chechnya, Khankala, had risen to sixty (Agence France Presse, March 8). An official with the... MORE

An episode which the newspaper Nezavisimaya gazeta (March 6) termed "unprecedented" occurred at the beginning of March in the Chechen settlement of Dzhalka, located on the railroad line linking two major cities--Djohar and Gudermes. On March 2, the local FSB conducted a nocturnal raid on... MORE

According to the chief military procurator of Russia, General Mikhail Kislitsyn, seven Russian soldiers have to date received sentences for crimes committed during the 1999-2001 "counterterrorist operation." An additional fifty-eight investigations into possible crimes have been initiated (Russkaya mysl, March 8). In a recent interview... MORE