Chechnya's special election to fill the pro-Moscow administration's newly vacant presidency is now set for September 5, and the Putin administration is weighing its options. According to an analysis by Zoya Svetova in the May 17 issue of Russky Kurier, the Kremlin has yet to... MORE

Was Akhmad Kadyrov led to his assassination by a traitor within his own inner circle? Among the many theories now competing for attention is that of Sergei Goncharov, head of the association of veterans of the "Alpha" elite commando unit. He told the pro-Kremlin website... MORE

In an obscure aside during an interview with the popular weekly Argumenty i Fakty, Ramzan Kadyrov said that he knows who it was who killed his father. He chose not to be more precise except to say that the mastermind of the May 9 assassination... MORE

In a heavy-handed crackdown on Islamic extremism similar to those which have inflamed tensions in Uzbekistan, Dagestan has forbidden the sale or distribution of Russian translations of the Qur'an. Since the overwhelming majority of Muslims in the Caucasus do not read or speak Arabic, the... MORE

In the mostly Muslim provinces of southern Russia neighboring Chechnya, the reaction to Akhmad Kadyrov's death has been lukewarm. Public statements by officials, memorial services and the like have focused mainly on condemning yet another act of terrorism rather than on commemorating Kadyrov himself, according... MORE

Pro-Moscow forces in Chechnya are increasingly now capturing children and adolescents. Though it cannot be excluded that older male adolescents may be participants in separatist guerrilla units, the usual practice is not to arrest them as criminal suspects but simply to kidnap them without providing... MORE

Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliev told a closed-door session of the State Duma on May 19 that the technique of planting a bomb deep in the very concrete structure of a building was new to his colleagues in Russia's security agencies. As reported by Novye Izvestia... MORE

Was Akhmad Kadyrov a casualty of poor planning and purchasing decisions in the Russian military? An article by Viktor Myasnikov in Nezavisimaya Gazeta on May 21 argued that the federal armed services' failure to buy modern metal detectors is what made it impossible for Kadyrov's... MORE

Mikhail Trepashkin, the dissident ex-FSB lawyer who tried to investigate his former employer's links to the 1999 apartment bombings that gave Vladimir Putin his justification for the second Chechen war, received a four-year prison sentence on May 19 for revealing state secrets and for illegally... MORE

Election authorities in Chechnya have now scheduled the special election to fill the republic's vacant presidency for August 29 - a week earlier than the latest date possible under the constitution which went into force last year. According to RIA Novosti, the decision was confirmed... MORE