On June 18, President Vladimir Putin invited a number of correspondents representing leading American media to the Kremlin for a discussion of the significance of what had occurred when he had met three days previously with President Bush in Slovenia. One of the questions put... MORE

On June 27, the general secretary of the Council of Europe, Walter Schwimmer, criticized the "state of impunity" created in Chechnya due to the pronounced inactivity of the local pro-Moscow judicial organs. Schwimmer underscored that each individual who has infringed basic human rights must be... MORE

The trial in a military court in Rostov-on-Don of Colonel Yury Budanov, accused of having strangled a young Chechen woman, 18-year-old El'za Kungaeva, in March of 2000, has been slowly dragging on since February 28. On Friday, June 22, Budanov finally took the stand to... MORE

The June 26 issue of the Boston Globe carried a report by correspondent David Filipov, filed from Nazran, Ingushetia, concerning the extraordinary corruption of and war crimes committed by the Russian forces based in Chechnya. As is well known, Russian soldiers in Chechnya are engaged... MORE

On June 24, the Combined Group of Russian Forces announced that earlier in the day it had killed the notorious kidnapper and Wahhabi field commander, Arbi Baraev, a man who, according to the army newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda, "had personally participated in the murders of 170... MORE

In a chilling development, the well-known Russian war correspondent Anna Politkovskaya and Zeinap Gashaeva, the leader of a human rights group based in Ingushetia, have announced that at least twenty-three civilians living in mountain villages in the Vedeno District of Chechnya have been murdered during... MORE

In early July, Russia stepped up its "mopping-up operations" against Chechnya's civilian populace, thereby prompting a new large-scale exodus of refugees into Ingushetia. The operations were conducted in two villages--Sernovodsk and Assinovskaya--located on the border with the Ingush Republic that had previously been designated "safe... MORE

Forty-four Chechen refugees are presently continuing a hunger strike in the camps for forced migrants located in Ingushetia. The hunger strikers have vowed not to eat anything until the Russian government consents to negotiate a settlement to the current conflict with Aslan Maskhadov, the elected... MORE

When, on July 2, President Vladimir Putin hosted a meeting with President Jacques Chirac of France in the Kremlin, he strongly denounced the recent transfer of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague. Chirac replied that, while he understood... MORE