In a reversal of his previous policies, Akhmad Kadyrov has announced his willingness to negotiate with the president of Chechnya's underground separatist government. As reported by Andrei Riskin in a November 17 article for Nezavisimaya gazeta, Kadyrov told a Moscow press conference that he would... MORE

Chechen diplomat Akhmed Zakaev, fresh from his stunning victory over the Russian authorities in a London court (see below), now explicitly rejects the possibility of revived negotiations with the Putin administration--even though he previously spent years pursuing such a negotiated settlement to the Chechen conflict.... MORE

An indicator that Kremlin-watchers will be monitoring during the next few weeks: Will Kadyrov succeed in the near future in getting Vladimir Putin's signature onto a special treaty allocating powers between Chechnya and the federal center? According to a November 17 article in Vremya novostei,... MORE

An article by Andrei Pilipchuk in the November 12 issue of Krasnaya zvezda ("Red Star"), the Russian military's newspaper, suggests that relations between the Kadyrov administration and Russia's security agencies remain tense. In striking contradiction to both Kadyrov's and Putin's official lines about "normalization" in... MORE

Did the Russian government pay a ransom, or possibly release captured rebel guerrillas, in order to win the release last week of two officials from its own procuracy who had been held captive by the rebels? According to a November 17 article in Nezavisimaya gazeta,... MORE

Russian authorities may have even more reason than previously suspected for launching a bogus criminal case against the dissident lawyer Mikhail Trepashkin (see Chechnya Weekly, November 6 and November 13). The day before his arrest last month, Trepashkin told reporter Igor Korolkov of the weekly... MORE

Britain's Lord Frank Judd has been moving toward a stronger anti-Kremlin position on Chechnya ever since he resigned in the spring from his position as the Council of Europe's chief specialist on the subject. That trend continued to be evident in his remarks at a... MORE

Readers of Chechnya Weekly in the New York area will be interested in a briefing by Musa Muradov hosted by the Committee to Protect Journalists, scheduled for November 24. Muradov, editor in chief of the Chechen newspaper Groznensky rabochy and Chechnya correspondent for the independent... MORE

The most authoritative evaluation of the Putin administration's policies in Chechnya so far published by any branch of government in any country in the world came on November 13, in the form of a London court ruling. The results of that evaluation directly challenge not... MORE

"Don't forget that Chechnya is an extremely tiny place, just 0.1 percent of Russia's total land area with at present about 0.4 percent of Russia's population. Thus the criminal violence there is extremely concentrated. In proportion to their numbers, during the last decade Chechens have... MORE