Where is Khattab's head?" the publication Mir Novostei recently asked insistently. "Judging by public opinion polls," the publication went on, "less than a third of Russians believe in the death of Khattab. The majority consider that this was a cunning trick of the Arab mercenary,... MORE

On April 30, the chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, General Anatoly Kvashnin, confidently asserted that Chechen field commander Shamil Basaev had been killed, though, he was required to add, "the body of Basaev has for the time being not been... MORE

On May 6, the website Religion.russ.ru reported the celebration on the previous day of "perhaps the most unusual Easter in the entire Orthodox space." On May 5, the Russian Orthodox Easter service had been served at the site of the semi-destroyed church of Michael the... MORE

former high-level advisor to President Yeltsin, Leonid Smirnyagin, who is currently an associate at the Carnegie Center in Moscow, recently observed that the proximity of the small autonomous republic of Ingushetia to Chechnya and the fact that it contains a large number of internally displaced... MORE

On May 25, the Washington Post reported that a few hours after his joint news conference with President Putin in Moscow following their recent summit, President George W. Bush, "gave a speech at the U.S. ambassador's residence upbraiding Russia for its handling of the Chechnya... MORE

The Russian media have commented at length on the recent determination by psychiatrists employed at the Serbsky Institute in Moscow that Colonel Yury Budanov--on trial in a military court in Rostov-on-Don for having strangled a young Chechen woman in March of 2000--had been "temporarily insane"... MORE

You wrote that the cutthroat Khattab was poisoned," one letter to the editors of the weekly Argumenty i Fakty recalled, "Who did it, and how?" Citing sources in the Russian special services, the editors responded: "In the middle of May, in the Dagestani settlement of... MORE

Do you consider it necessary to continue the military operation in Chechnya, or to begin peaceful negotiations with the Chechen leadership?" the polling organization VTsIOM asked a nationwide sample of Russian respondents in late April. The results of the poll: continue the operation, 34 percent;... MORE

The Era of Samizdat Has Returned to Russia," the website APN.ru pronounced on May 21. Publishing houses had refused to publish the manuscript of the book "The FSB Is Blowing Up Russia," authored by former FSB officer Aleksander Litvinenko and independent researcher Yury Fel'shtinsky, which... MORE