On July 12, the official Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported that a well-known separatist field commander, Abu-Umar, a native of Saudi Arabia, had been "destroyed" in a special joint operation by the FSB and the MVD conducted in Mairtup, Shali District. At the time... MORE

On July 20, the Russian minister in charge of Chechnya, Vladimir Elagin, threatened to begin cutting off aid to Chechen refugees living in Ingushetia. Elagin charged that some 15,000 Chechen refugees whose homes had not been destroyed in Chechnya were nonetheless continuing to live in... MORE

On July 13, President Vladimir Putin met with retired MVD General Aslambek Aslakhanov, the elected deputy to the Russian State Duma from Chechnya. Aslakhanov has consistently been a harsh critic of the numerous "mopping up operations" being conducted in the republic by the federal forces.... MORE

On July 26, the chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, General Anatoly Kvashnin, vigorously refuted rumors circulating within Russia concerning the existence of "negotiations with the Chechen separatists." Kvashnin noted that he had met with Vladimir Putin just two days previously... MORE

Writing in the July 27 issue of the Washington Post, the newspaper's Moscow correspondent, Susan Glasser, observed: "Kremlin officials now compare [the present Chechen war] to decades-old conflicts such as Northern Island.... Inside the Kremlin, according to interviews with numerous officials and political observers, there... MORE

On July 25, Yelena Bonner, widow of the Nobel prize-winning human rights activist Andrei Sakharov, during a luncheon in her honor hosted by the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, DC, compared the silence regarding Moscow's war in the rebel republic of Chechnya to that... MORE

Writing in the July 27 issue of Moscow Times, the well-known military journalist Pavel Felgenhauer sharply criticized the G-7 nations for what he saw as their myopic behavior at the recent summit in Genoa: "Only two months ago," he wrote, "the Kremlin was in near... MORE

The July 28 issue of the Washington Times reported that the most recent public opinion survey taken by the Russian polling organization ROMIR found that "just 30.7 percent of Russians back Mr. Putin's aggressive war" while "40.9 percent said they thought Russia should either reduce... MORE

On July 26, a new crackdown on Russian and foreign journalists working in Chechnya was announced by Russian federal forces based in the republic. "The reason for the crackdown," the online daily Gazeta.ru commented, "is obviously the military's and the Kremlin's discontent with the journalists'... MORE