Akhmad Kadryov spends relatively little time in his presidential office in Grozny, according to a report by Anna Politkovskaya in the November 20 issue of Novaya gazeta. His life is mostly spent either at his "house-fortress" in his home village in eastern Chechnya's Kurchaloi district,... MORE

Could the trial of GRU spetsnaz commandos for murdering Chechen civilians become another Budanov case (see Chechnya Weekly, July 31)? In a November 20 article for Novaya gazeta, Anna Politkovskaya reported that the two-year-old murder was typical except for one thing: A federal officer also... MORE

On November 19 several non-government organizations providing humanitarian assistance in the northern Caucasus made a joint announcement with the United Nations, appealing for US$62 million in voluntary donations for charitable projects in Chechnya and neighboring republics. According to the joint appeal, some 1.2 million people... MORE

According to a November 24 report in Novye izvestia, assassination attempts were mounted on three different high ranking officials of the Kadyrov administration last weekend. All three were unsuccessful. The highest ranking of the three targets was Sultan Satuev, deputy head of Kadyrov's Internal Affairs... MORE

In a bizarre incident that may have been deliberately planned to discredit parliamentary candidate Salambek Maigov, Grozny police briefly detained a member of his campaign staff last week. Maigov, one of the ten candidates running for Chechnya's seat in the federal Duma, was campaigning in... MORE

Thanks mostly to Chechnya, Russia has suddenly become the world's largest source of would-be refugees seeking political asylum in western Europe. A November 19 Radio Liberty report by Jeremy Bransten found that this year Russia has outstripped countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan as an... MORE

With winter approaching, the intensity of combat operations in Chechnya is likely to diminish. During the leafless winter the republic's forests provide the rebel guerrillas with less cover to shield them from federal observation and bombardment. During the next several months we should expect fewer... MORE

Thomas Goltz, Chechnya Diary: A War Correspondent's Story of Surviving the War in Chechnya, St. Martin's Press, New York, 2003. Reviewed by Lawrence A. Uzzell On April 7 and 8, 1995, troops from Russia's Interior Ministry entered the village of Samashki in western Chechnya. Though... MORE

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has decided not to send observers to monitor Chechnya's December 7 election of a new representative in the federal Duma. A November 17 report by the state controlled Interfax news agency emphasized concerns about the observers'... MORE

The no. 16 (March 5-11) issue of the weekly Novaya Gazeta contains a piece by the well-known war correspondent Anna Politkovskaya concerning conversations she had with three eighteen-year-old soldiers who had sought her out in mid-February while she was momentarily alone at a paratroop base... MORE