September 1 marked the final, formal transition in the leadership of federal operations against the guerrillas in Chechnya from the FSB to the Interior Ministry. Nikolai Patrushev, head of the FSB, boasted a few days earlier that his agency and the other federal forces had... MORE

The parents and siblings of a Chechen girl murdered by a Russian tank officer have reluctantly become refugees in Norway. Fearing retaliation from ex-Colonel Yury Budanov's supporters, the Kungaev family recalled to Lydia Grafova of Novaya gazeta how Budanov said to them after being found... MORE

Unofficial estimates put the number of drug users in Chechnya at about 20,000, according to the August 28 Caucasus News Update of the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting (see the organization's website at www.iwpr.net). That is a huge number for a country that... MORE

Writing in the August 28 issue of Novaya gazeta, Anna Politkovskaya envisioned a scenario in which rival federal security agencies might end up backing rival presidential candidates--with the FSB behind Kadyrov and the GRU signaling a possible switch to another contender. According to Politkovskaya's sources,... MORE

As the cycle of revenge and counter-revenge between Chechens and Russians continues to spiral downward, it is worthwhile to pause for a longer view. The greatest Russian nationalist of the 20th century, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, provided some occasional glimpses of the Chechens in his classic of... MORE

A mine exploded on the outskirts of Grozny on August 21, destroying a vehicle in a federal military convoy and killing nine Russian troops, a Russian military source told Interfax on August 22. Six federal soldiers were killed in attacks by separatist rebels during a... MORE

The torching of four Grozny liquor shops in one night testifies to the influence of Islamic extremism among the rebel guerrillas, suggested the website Newsru.com on August 26. According to the website's report, all the alcoholic merchandise in every one of the shops was completely... MORE

Have Chechen separatist guerrillas been fighting against the United States and its allies in places such as Iraq or Afghanistan--and if so, how many have been captured or killed? The U.S. government has been strikingly passive in seeking to learn (or, at least, in publicly... MORE

In the former Soviet Union, as in the United States, the first week of September is when vacations end and people get back to work. In theory, Chechnya's presidential election campaign is now entering its most intense phase, with the voting less than a month... MORE

Dzhabrailov still has given no clear explanation of his awkward withdrawal--even in a long radio interview he granted with Ekho Moskvy on September 4. Not surprisingly, he rejected the interpretation publicly offered by Khasbulatov and many others--that he had withdrawn because of pressure from the... MORE