During a visit to Russia, former U.S. national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski granted an interview to Nezavisimaya Gazeta, during which he stated, among other things: "As for the Chechens and Afghanistan, I can state that, up until the present time, our [U.S.] military has not... MORE

On March 4, the author of this newsletter made a twenty-five-minute presentation during a session held at the U.S. Department of State which was devoted to the conflict in Chechnya.

The March 6 issue of Kommersant contained a detailed report, authored by journalists Natalya Gevorkyan and Vladimir Kara-Murza, concerning a press conference held in London, "very close to Downing Street," on the previous day by oligarch-in-exile Boris Berezovsky. During the course of the press conference,... MORE

On March 8, the online daily Gazeta.ru reported the extraordinary news that Akhmed Zakaev, a deputy prime minister in the Chechen separatist government and a special representative of Aslan Maskhadov, had met with the chief prosecutor of the Hague International Tribunal for the affairs of... MORE

Yevgeny Primakov, the former Russian prime minister, foreign minister and SVR director, has suggested that Russia adopt the tsarist "Finnish model" in an attempt to foster a settlement to the conflict in Chechnya. On March 11, the Russian website Inosmi.ru carried a Russian translation of... MORE

Of course," Primakov said to Le Monde, "one must offer Chechnya special rights within Russia. Take the example of Finland: During tsarist times, [Finland] was granted an autonomy so broad that the Finns were able not to surrender Russian revolutionaries who had conducted a congress... MORE

In recent comments, leading representatives of the Russian state and of the Chechen separatist leadership have underlined that bilateral negotiations between the two sides have ground to a complete halt. In an interview with Moskovskie Novosti, separatist deputy premier Akhmed Zakaev stated: "After the January... MORE

On March 15, the Public Consultative Council, established under the auspices of the State Duma-Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Working Group on Chechnya, met for the first time in Moscow. The group consisted of some thirty representatives of Chechen factions with widely... MORE

In Moscow for meetings of the Duma-PACE joint Working Group on Chechnya, Lord Judd maintained on March 21 during an interview with Ekho Moskvy Radio: "You can't resolve the situation [in Chechnya] without a political settlement. Maskhadov is the political reality of today's Chechnya. If... MORE