One of the most feared places in Chechnya is the huge Russian base at Khankala, just outside Grozny. It is feared not so much because it is the main headquarters for Russian military operations in the republic, but because it is a center for imprisonment... MORE

On June 20 a truck bomb exploded near a Ministry of Justice building in Grozny. About forty people were wounded, seven seriously. In a June 23 article entitled "Terrorist acts in Chechnya are taking place as if according to a schedule," correspondent Mainat Abdulaeva of... MORE

Since the official Kremlin line insists that Russia's military operations are succeeding in the pacification of Chechnya, it is difficult for Russia's generals to discuss candidly in public the precise reasons why their operations are in fact failing. The June 20 issue of Nezavisimoe voennoe... MORE

The hopes of Mikhail Khodarenok's Defense Ministry sources to rely more and more on small, highly mobile units of spetsnaz commandos seemed, by the end of June, to be increasingly misdirected. In direct contradiction to the analysis of these military experts, the rebels are now... MORE

Comite Tchetchenie, Tchetchenie: Dix cles pour comprendre ("Chechnya: Ten Keys for Understanding"). Paris, La Decouverte, 9 bis, rue Abel-Hovelacque, 75013 Paris (www.editionsladecouverte.fr). ISBN 2-7071-3997-1 125 pages. Price: 6.4 Euros (@US$ 7.35). The situation in Chechnya is changing so rapidly that even the best books soon... MORE

"ZACHISTKI" IN INGUSHETIA The federal forces now seem to have transferred to Ingushetia the large scale "zachistki" security sweeps that earlier terrorized civilians in Chechnya (see Chechnya Weekly, June 19). Dmitry Grushkin of the Moscow-based human rights center Memorial told Radio Liberty that these raids... MORE

HOUSING "RESTORATION" IN GROZNY Anna Politkovskaya of Novaya gazeta recently visited an apartment house in Grozny that the Kadyrov administration likes to display as an example of the restoration work that it has been doing with federal subsidies. She found that the building's yard had... MORE

A band of unidentified attackers murdered the head of the council of elders in the village of Vashindaroi in Chechnya's Shatoi district during the night of June 26-27. They burst into the elder's home at about 2:00 a.m., dragged him out onto the street and... MORE

Akhmad Kadyrov's son, Zelimkhan, still faces the possibility of a prison sentence of four to seven years for public disorderliness in the south Russian city of Kislovodsk. He was arrested there on June 5 and accused of taking part in a gunfight. Russian television news... MORE

Relations between Akhmad Kadyrov and the Kremlin seem ever more to be like those that existed before the rise of the modern state between a medieval baron and a royal court. The baron has his own private army, which like him is ostensibly loyal to... MORE