Russia's highest military award, the order of "Hero of Russia," has been bestowed on five people for their roles in the Dubrovka Theater hostage crisis of October 2002. But a member of the federal Duma learned that only two of these medals went to soldiers... MORE

The likely resignation of Lord Frank Judd, currently serving as rapporteur for the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, does not necessarily mean that Russia will now get a free ride in that body. The assembly's committee on legal affairs and human rights has... MORE

Moscow clearly wants Western observers to monitor the March 23 constitutional referendum in Chechnya as a symbol of its legitimacy, and also for those observers to concentrate on such purely technical questions as the physical preparation of polling stations, ballot papers and the like. And... MORE

Knowledgeable observers in both Moscow and Washington have been predicting for weeks that the U.S. State Department, under heavy lobbying from the Kremlin, would formally classify three Chechen organizations as terrorist groups subject to U.S. sanctions. But when the State Department's decision was finally announced... MORE

Political analyst Aleksei Makarkin suggested in a detailed commentary published on March 3 by the website Politcom.ru that the federal authorities are making conciliatory gestures toward the opponents of their own appointee in Grozny, Akhmad Kadyrov. Makarkin noted several indications that the Kremlin is going... MORE

"AUTONOMY" A MIRAGE? Yet another conciliatory gesture from Moscow was the recent promise made by Vladislav Surokov, President Putin's deputy chief of staff, that Chechnya would have "the broadest autonomy" once it adopts the constitution proposed in this month's referendum. "In the future a treaty... MORE

"Neither side yet wants a genuine, mutual absolution of wartime sins." That is the verdict of Anna Politkovskaya, who predicted in an April 21 article for "Novaya gazeta" that the forthcoming amnesty in Chechnya will take into account the interests of only one side--and that... MORE

Two unpleasant but important truths were confirmed on April 20, when a pro-separatist website broadcast a video documenting a successful April 15 attack on a bus near Grozny. The first of these truths--and one that is no surprise to knowledgeable observers--is that the Moscow-appointed Kadyrov... MORE

Was the April 17 murder of the prominent Russian reformist legislator, Sergei Yushenkov, connected with his opposition to the Putin administration's war on Chechnya? Perhaps some deathbed confession or leak from secret archives will provide a definitive answer to that question many years from now.... MORE

By Peter Rutland, Wesleyan University On April 5 a panel of specialists discussed the situation in Chechnya at the annual conference of the Association for Study of Nationalities at Columbia University in New York City. The panel was chaired by the Hoover Institution's John Dunlop... MORE