With little more than a murmur of token protest from the Western world, the Russian and Ingush authorities on June 7 closed Ingushetia’s Satsita tent camp, the last one housing Chechen refugees. A formal ceremony marking the camp’s closing, to be followed by its total... MORE

A representative of Russia’s State Duma seems to have deliberately deceived visiting PACE delegates in order to try to prevent them from meeting with Russian human-rights activists. According to a June 3 statement by Lev Ponomarev, head of the Moscow-based For Human Rights movement, Duma... MORE

Last week, a mass demonstration against state kidnappings of civilians in Chechnya brought together in Grozny several hundred relatives of kidnap victims. According to a June 4 statement by the Memorial human-rights center, the anti-government demonstration was the largest the Chechen capital has seen for... MORE

Gross manipulation of elections is easy in a completely totalitarian state, but can have self-defeating results in a semi-totalitarian one. The Kremlin’s interference in last autumn’s presidential election for the pro-Moscow Chechen administration was so heavy-handed that most of the credible candidates have so far... MORE

On July 22, the election officials of Chechnya's pro-Moscow administration formally rejected the registration of Malik Saidullaev as a candidate in the republic's special presidential election scheduled for the end of August. The pro-Moscow authorities thus removed from contention the one serious competitor to Kremlin-anointed... MORE

A strikingly candid discussion of the behind-the-scenes tensions between the Kremlin and the Kadyrov clan appeared on the Strana.ru website on July 23. The article by Fyodor Chekhoev predictably gave the Kremlin's viewpoint—or at least the viewpoint of that faction within the Kremlin which is... MORE

Not surprisingly, distrust and pessimism continue to be hallmarks of public opinion in Chechnya. In early July, the Institute of Social Marketing conducted an opinion survey in 74 Chechen cities, towns and villages, including Grozny, Gudermes, Shali and Urus-Martan. The results of such polls should... MORE

A July 21 article for the Polit.ru website by Aleksandr Cherkasov of the Memorial human rights group suggests that Chechnya-watchers should give more weight to ongoing unemployment as a contributing element in the tensions that led to the secessionist movement and the outbreak of war... MORE

Yet another sign that Chechnya's war is heating up came from the Associated Press on July 25, which as usual provided new reports on federal casualties from its sources inside Chechnya's pro-Moscow administration. An anonymous official told the news agency that rebel guerrillas had mounted... MORE

"The demagogic view that Chechnya was truly presented with a chance for independence during the period from 1997 to 1997 cannot survive serious examination….In fact Chechnya was not a legal subject of international law, did not have the right to sign treaties or to take... MORE