Chechen President Alu Alkhanov on March 28 praised a roundtable on Chechnya held in Strasbourg on March 21 under the auspices of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). Alkhanov called the meeting "constructive and productive" and said that the European community now... MORE

Kavkazcenter, citing another pro-separatists website, marsho.dk, reported on March 24 that Musa Yusupov, the Tolstoi-Yurt resident in whose home Aslan Maskhadov allegedly hid and was killed, had been found dead. Marsho.dk's sources in Chechnya reported that the Tolstoi-Yurt residents who discovered Yusupov's body were shaken... MORE

The website of the Nizhny Novgorod-based Russian-Chechen Friendship Society (ORChD) reported on March 29 that two Achkoi-Martan residents who had been kidnapped by members of unknown "power structures" on March 27 and March 28 were both released on March 28 after being beaten by their... MORE

Itar-Tass on March 23 quoted Chechen First Deputy Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov as reporting that rebel field commander Rizvan Chitigov had been killed in a raid carried out by pro-Moscow security forces and republican Interior Ministry troops. RIA Novosti reported on March 24 that Chitigov... MORE

The State Department's annual report on U.S. efforts to promote democracy around the world, which was released on March 28, included some comments about Chechnya. The report, "Supporting Human Rights and Democracy: The U.S. Record 2004 – 2005," which was compiled by the State Department's... MORE

On March 29, a court in Grozny sentenced Sergei Lapin, an Interior Ministry OMON special-forces officer, to 11 years in a strict-regime labor camp on charges of inflicting bodily harm and exceeding his authority, Itar-Tass reported. According to investigators, Lapin, a police officer from the... MORE

On March 28, hundreds of people participated in a protest demonstration in Nazran, Ingushetia. The demonstration was organized by the Akhki-Yurt movement, which is led by an opposition member of the republic's parliament, Musa Ozdoev. Kommersant on March 29 quoted Akhki-Yurt members as saying that... MORE

The commander of the federal Interior Ministry's Internal Troops, Col.-General Nikolai Rogozhkin, told a press conference in Moscow organized by the Itar-Tass news agency that there are 22,000 Interior Ministry troops currently deployed in the North Caucasus. "Our first and foremost tasks there are to... MORE

The Moscow authorities on March 24 threatened to change the name of Moscow's Klimashkin Street, where Poland's embassy is located, to General Mikhail Muravyov Street, after the tsarist general who brutally suppressed the Polish uprising of 1863. The move followed the Warsaw city council's decision... MORE

Once the most stabile republic of the North Caucasus, North Ossetia is increasingly turning into a region of conflict. Demands for the resignation of North Ossetian President Alexander Dzasokhov, heard practically everywhere in the immediate aftermath of the Beslan tragedy, are not the only threat... MORE