As of March 1, the federal and Ingush authorities had not fully succeeded in their campaign to close all the refugee camps in Ingushetia by that date. But they were getting closer. An official of the Kadyrov administration told Interfax on March 1 that the... MORE

Pro-Moscow security agencies in Chechnya won a major victory on March 7 with the surrender of Magomed Khambiev, minister of defense in the underground separatist government of Aslan Maskhadov. Many, though not all, reports of this event in the Russian media have failed to mention... MORE

With Russian President Vladimir Putin's expected reelection triumph just days away--and looking more and more like the October 2003 pseudo-election of Akhmad Kadyrov--the Russian authorities are further intensifying their pressure on Chechen refugees. In a March 6 article for Prague Watchdog, Ruslan Isaev reported that... MORE

Vague reports in the western media about Islamic militants leaving Chechnya to fight against U.S. troops and their allies in Iraq--supposedly under the command of the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi--continue to receive scornful comment from well informed experts. Historian Brian Williams of the University... MORE

The Russian journalist Yelena Tregubova, target of an unsuccessful assassination attempt after she wrote a candid book about life inside Putin's Kremlin, has fled to a foreign country. She is so fearful of a second attempt, according to an article in the March 7 Washington... MORE

Moscow's attempts to win the release of two Russian intelligence officers imprisoned in Qatar remained stalled as of March 8. According to a March 6 article in Gazeta.ru, the Persian Gulf Sheikhdom has extended the period during which the two are to remain under arrest.... MORE

By Zaindi Choltaev and Michaela Pohl Human rights organizations in Russia have obtained copies of a directive used to carry out special operation "Hurricane-4," a set of special anti-Chechen and anti-Caucasian security measures imposed on major Russian cities in recent months and weeks. This document... MORE

The U.S. State Department's latest annual report on human rights around the world, released on February 25 and available on the department's website, www.state.gov, included tough criticisms of kidnappings in Chechnya. The report quoted the estimates of such respected, independent human rights monitors as Memorial... MORE

After the latest terrorist attack in Moscow, we again are hearing proposals to bring back the death penalty, calls to "torch them with a red hot iron" and to "go to the end," and demands for applying the principle of collective responsibility to entire ethnic... MORE

Chechnya has now had four events described as "elections" since March of 2003, and each one has been more brazenly fraudulent than the one before it. In the March 14 election for the presidency of the Russian Federation, the authorities barely tried to provide any... MORE