Correspondent Ruslan Isaev of Prague Watchdog reported on July 21 that federal servicemen detained eight residents of Grozny's Chernorechnye district, including three girls, in a July 16 "zachistka." According to eyewitnesses, the operation was conducted not by police of the Kadyrov administration but by Russian... MORE

The Putin administration's effort to extradite Akhmed Zakaev--an emissary of Aslan Maskhadov--from the United Kingdom suffered another defeat this month when one of the Kremlin's principal witnesses undermined an accusation previously attributed to him. On July 10 Father Filipp Zhigulin, who was kidnapped seven years... MORE

It is not only the ultra-nationalist Russian media that grumble about the Kadyrov administration's recruitment of former rebel guerrillas. The newly revived Moscow newspaper Novye izvestia, a vocal defender of human rights and a critic of the war in Chechnya, has fingered yet another such... MORE

The new head of the Chechen Republic's OMON special police hinted in an interview published by the website Utro.ru on July 21 that he does not entirely agree with the Kadyrov administration's policy of recruiting former rebel guerrillas into the pro-Moscow security agencies--or at least... MORE

Pro-reform deputies in the Russian parliament hope to force a debate this fall on a legislative proposal that would, as a report in Novye izvestia put it, "place the [Chechen] war...within a certain legal framework." According to the July 8 article by Aleksandr Zhelenin and... MORE

In an interview published in the July 15 issue of Yezhenedelny zhurnal, director Sergei Khaikin of the research center Validata discussed the results of the center's recent polls in Chechnya, which were conducted jointly with the Obshchestvennoe mnenie ("Public Opinion") foundation. Predictably, perhaps, for an... MORE

The experience of cities such as London or Tel Aviv has shown that one can get used to terrorism. Most people go about their daily business almost as if the threat did not exist; after all, for the average civilian the risk of a terrorist... MORE

Six federal servicemen were killed and eight wounded in a firefight in the Chechen highlands' Vedeno district last weekend, the news agency Interfax reported on July 21. A Russian military source told the agency that the firefight began when a group of rebel guerrillas was... MORE

Is Russia laying the groundwork for the future destabilization of Ukraine? Russian nationalists will find ample justification in a July 17 article in Izvestia, which claims that the Crimea has become a stronghold of Chechen rebels and Islamic extremists. The article by Yanina Sokolovskaya consists... MORE

Students from Chechnya have to pay even higher bribes than others for admission to Russia's universities, charged a former Chechen official now living in Moscow. Ex-foreign minister Shamil Beno told Ekho Moskvy on July 17 that $US500 is the minimum payment for a candidate from... MORE