Commenting on the violence in Ingushetia, Aleksandr Cherkasov of the Memorial human rights group wrote in an item posted on Ej.ru, the website of Yezhednevny zhurnal, on June 12 that the nearly simultaneous murders of Musa Nalgiev and Galina Gubina were neither coincidental nor unexpected.... MORE

The separatist Kavkazcenter.com website on June 15 posted a video clip of Chechen rebel warlord Shamil Basaev discussing the May 2004 assassination of Akhmad Kadyrov and plans to kill his son, Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov. While the video was for unknown reasons inaccessible when... MORE

Intermittent attacks, shootings, and explosions in Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, and Kabardino-Balkaria have punctured the relative stability that has existed in the North Caucasus since the Beslan school massacre in September 2004. Now it may end with massive destabilization, triggered by resumed fighting in South Ossetia.... MORE

The death of Chechen separatist leader Abdul-Khalim Sadulaev was first announced by Chechen government officials on June 17. Interfax quoted Chechen government minister Muslim Khuchiev as saying that Sadulaev was killed in a special operation in the city of Argun—Sadulaev's hometown— when members of the... MORE

The unofficial version of the events surrounding the death of Abdul-Khalim Sadulaev, reported by the newspaper Kommersant and the Memorial Human Rights Center, varies significantly from the one presented by the Chechen government. Kommersant on June 19 quoted unnamed Chechen policemen as telling it "unofficially"... MORE

Independent observers and politicians had widely varying assessments of the significance of Abdul-Khalim Sadulaev's death. Gazeta, on June 17, quoted Aleksei Malashenko of the Moscow Carnegie Center as saying that while Sadulaev was not a particularly significant figure, his death would seriously affect the actions... MORE

An al-Qaeda-linked group in Iraq claimed in a statement released on June 19 that it was holding the four Russian diplomats who were kidnapped in Baghdad on June 3 and demanded that Moscow withdraw its troops from Chechnya and "release all our brothers and sisters"... MORE

Like his predecessors in the war, the leader of the Chechen resistance movement, president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (ChRI), Abdul-Khalim Sadulaev, has been killed [1]. A. Sardali, a resident of Argun, was quoted by the Kavkazcenter website as saying that up to several... MORE

On June 27, the Chechen separatist Daymohk published two decrees by Dokku Umarov, the new leader of the separatist movement and president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (ChRI). One decree removed Abdallakh Shamil Abu-Idris, a.k.a. Shamil Basaev, from the post of first deputy chairman... MORE

Interfax reported on June 29 that during a broadcast of the program “Kriminalnaya khronika” (Criminal Chronicle) on the Chechen state television channel Grozny, Arbi Zakriev, a senior officer with the criminal investigation department of the Urus-Martan police, said that Shamil Basaev and Dokku Umarov were... MORE