An aide to Akhmed Zakaev, vice premier of Chechnya's underground separatist government, told the Jamestown Foundation in a February 3 telephone conversation from London that Zakaev is confident the Russian government will not succeed in its current effort to extradite him from the United Kingdom... MORE

Federal subsidies to Chechnya are in effect financing the separatist guerrillas, according to an article by Valery Vyzhutovich in "Moskovskie Novosti." Much of the federal aid intended for Chechnya goes through contractors, an anonymous federal bureaucrat told me, and that about half it never reaches... MORE

According to a Voice of America report aired on February 4, a Russian official has confirmed that nearly 40,000 of the Russian troops now stationed in Chechnya will be eligible to vote in the March 23 constitutional referendum. Abdul-Khakim Sultygov, Moscow's human rights envoy for... MORE

THE CONSTITUTION: "BROAD AUTONOMY" FOR CHECHNYA? While there has been much discussion of the procedure for adopting the proposed new constitution for Chechnya, such as the timing of the constitutional referendum, the actual text of that document has received relatively little attention. But the text... MORE

THE NEWEST PRIME MINISTER, "A MODERN MAN OF AFFAIRS" When push comes to shove, Akhmad Kadyrov is now more indispensable to Russia's policies in Chechnya than any other one political figure in Grozny. But he is not so much so as to be able simply... MORE

THE REFUGEES: "A PATTERN OF INTIMIDATION" A major report by a New York-based international human rights organization provides the most detailed, authoritative study yet of how the Russian authorities are forcing Chechen refugees to return to a war zone where they face pervasive violence, persecution,... MORE

--KREMLIN ADMITS CONSTITUTION FLAWED. The Putin administration's in-house human rights advisers admit that its proposed constitution for Chechnya has serious flaws. Human-rights ombudsman Oleg Mironov told Radio Liberty on February 4 that the proposed text gives the president of the Chechen republic too much power... MORE

How many Russian soldiers have died in the current Chechen war? Russian officials issued dramatically conflicting accounts on February 17, with the Defense Ministry in Moscow contradicting figures released earlier in the day by the military headquarters for the Northern Caucasus. In a chilling example... MORE

It would appear that separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov now has a new representative in Moscow. At least, Salambek Maigov's claim to have been appointed to that position on February 3 has not been directly contradicted by any authoritative spokesman for Maskhadov since Maigov's Moscow press... MORE

Did President Jacques Chirac of France endorse the Kremlin's March 23 constitutional referendum during Vladimir Putin's recent visit to Paris? No, but the pro-Putin Russian media are trying to create the impression that he did--and Chirac's apparently deliberate vagueness on the issue is lending itself... MORE