News and analysis on the crisis in Chechnya NEWS

On January 18, President Vladimir Putin held a meeting in the Kremlin with the chairman of the international affairs committee of the Russian State Duma, Dmitry Rogozin, who also serves as the head of the Duma's delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of... MORE

Earlier in the week, on January 14, a joint delegation of PACE and the Russian State Duma arrived in Chechnya "to study conditions in the camps for Chechen refugees." The head of the PACE delegation was Tadeusz Iwinski, rapporteur of that body's committee on migration,... MORE

On January 15, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers, a former prime minister of the Netherlands, commenced a three-day visit to Moscow and to the refugee camps in Ingushetia. A spokesman for the commissioner stated that the main reason for Lubber's trip... MORE

On January 16, the first deputy chairman of the Russian Ministry of the Interior, Vladimir Vasil'ev, announced that troops from that ministry operating in Chechnya were "changing their tactics." From now on, he said, the troops would abandon the tactics of so-called mopping up operations... MORE

In an article appearing in the 18-24 issue of The Russia Journal, the well-known political commentator Andrei Piontkovsky discussed a "pamphlet-novel" issued last year by a leading conservative Russian writer, Aleksandr Prokhanov, chief editor of the weekly Zavtra. In the novel, entitled "Mr. Hexogen [Gospodin... MORE

Writing in the January issue 16 of the Los Angeles Times, journalist Maura Reynolds reported that Russia's leading human rights organization, Memorial, has "documented the apparent killing of three men and the disappearance of six others during a Russian 'special operation' in Chechnya over the... MORE

On January 17, Sergei Mironov, the speaker of the Russian Council of Federation, the non-elected upper chamber of the Russian parliament, asserted following a meeting with Lubbers that the high commissioner believed that negotiations between Russia and Chechen separatist President Aslan Maskhadov were "not very... MORE

On January 17, a State Duma deputy and leading "democrat," Sergei Yushenkov, announced to members of the press in Moscow that Aslan Maskhadov had expressed approval of a peace plan for Chechnya drafted by the Russian Public Antiwar Committee, of which Yushenkov is a member.... MORE

Chechnya Will Join the Union of Russia and Belorussia," read the headline of an item appearing in a January 17 entry appearing on the website Apn.ru. A plan to provide Chechnya with the same status that Belarus will enjoy under the Union State project is... MORE