In another major victory for its policies in Chechnya, the Putin administration has now persuaded the human-rights commissioner for the Council of Europe to endorse its controversial referendum to ratify a new constitution for the republic. Alvaro Gil-Robles even embraced the date of March 23,... MORE

Kadyrov's concession to Gil-Robles "changes nothing," dissident member of the Russian parliament Sergei Kovalev told Jamestown in a February 13 telephone interview. He said that if one accepted the official figures from last autumn's Moscow-controlled census in Chechnya, one would have to believe that since... MORE

Matthew Evangelista, The Chechen Wars: Will Russia Go the Way of the Soviet Union? Brookings Institution Press, Washington, 2002. The key to Matthew Evangelista's new book on Chechnya is its subtitle. The author, a professor of government at Cornell University, offers one of the few... MORE

--REVERSAL ON VOTING RIGHTS FOR CHECHEN REFUGEES? In an apparent reversal, the head of the Moscow-appointed Chechen government told a Grozny press conference on February 25 that only voters physically present in Chechnya will be allowed to cast ballots in next month's constitutional referendum. Akhmad... MORE

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told the state television channel Rossiya in an interview broadcast on February 21 that Washington would soon be formally adding three Chechen organizations to its official list of terrorist organizations. To put an organization into this category automatically triggers... MORE

A report signed by Russian officials confirms some of the charges made by human rights activists about the plight of Chechen refugees in Ingushetia. According to an Interfax news story on February 19, the authors of the report found that the refugees' "rights to choose... MORE

Akhmed Zakaev, who represents Aslan Maskhadov's separatist government in Western Europe, has confirmed that Salambek Maigov is indeed also a legitimate representative of that underground government. He told a correspondent of the pro-separatist Chechenpress in a February 19 interview that the appointment of Maigov to... MORE

...ARSANOV'S EMERGENCE RAISES QUESTIONS While Maigov's position is now more or less clear, another recently self-announced Chechen peacemaker in Moscow seems to occupy a more dubious status. Vakha Arsanov, former vice president of the separatist government, has resurfaced for the first time since 1999. He... MORE

Monday, February 24, was a day off across Russia in celebration of armed forces day, which this year fell on a Sunday. In a country that has long had compulsory military service for (in theory) all males, February 23 serves as a de facto "Father's... MORE

The Moscow weekly Novoye vremya (New Time) recently published a strikingly candid interview with Ruslan Aushev, former president of Ingushetia and now head of the committee for veterans' affairs of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Referring to Aslan Maskhadov as "the legally elected president" of... MORE