Is Alu Alkhanov just a temporary president of Chechnya's pro-Moscow administration, waiting for Ramzan Kadyrov to reach the age when he can take over? Not in the view of Svetlana Gannushkina of Memorial, who told Chechnya Weekly that Alkhanov "will have to move slowly, but... MORE

Svetlana Gannushkina of Memorial said that feelings of despair are now running so high among Chechens that her own organization was finding it difficult to persuade its Chechen employees to take part in the international human-rights conference scheduled for late September. "They see the situation... MORE

Russia's "anti-terrorist operation" in Chechnya is nominally conducted by a combined force reporting to the federal Interior Ministry. But an analysis recently published by the Agentura.ru website provides further evidence that it is the FSB that is really in charge. The head of the ROSh... MORE

An interview with Vladislav Surkov, President Putin's deputy chief of staff, published by Komsomolskaya pravda on October 1 provides a glimpse of the dark new political climate now facing Russia. Asked why it is Russia that should have fallen victim to the recent terrorist attacks,... MORE

Further confirmation that the Beslan terrorists killed schoolboys, not just grown men, in cold blood came in an October 4 article in Novaya gazeta by Kseniya Leonova, who interviewed 14-year-old ex-hostage Andrei Kuznetsov and his mother. Andrei is convinced that his short height saved his... MORE

Pavel Felgenhauer, the well-known independent military analyst, cited further evidence last week suggesting that the assault on the school was consciously planned in advance by the Russian authorities "not as a special operation for the purpose of rescuing the hostages, but as a military operation... MORE

Russia won a partial victory last week in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which passed a resolution calling for a political settlement of the conflict in the North Caucasus. At the Russian delegation's insistence, the final text included a provision accepting that... MORE

Yet another reporter was prevented by the Russian authorities from covering the hostage crisis in Beslan, according to an October 11 article in the English-language Moscow Times. Yuri Bagrov, an indigenous journalist who has covered the Caucasus for the Associated Press and Radio Liberty, had... MORE

Interviews in Gazeta last week provided further indications that elements in the security agencies are helping the terrorist warlord Shamil Basaev avoid arrest—in spite of repeated announcements that the Russian authorities consider him their most wanted fugitive. Recently the authorities offered a $10 million bounty... MORE

Since the tragic events in Beslan, much has changed in Russia. At first there was shock. The authorities seemed disoriented; instead of working effectively to rescue the hostages, they issued shameless lies about how many hostages there were. They even failed to visit the scene... MORE