FOREIGN AID STILL NOT REACHING ITS DESTINATION.

Writing in the February 6 issue of the army newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda, journalist Oleg Torin observed that there are presently more than twenty international NGOs, “basically from Western states,” active in the Chechen Republic. During the past year, they have sent “an enormous quantity of building materials, medicines and food” into the republic. One major problem is that not all of this aid reaches the “peaceful populace” of Chechnya. Even worse, “the representatives of several missions engage in the collection of information of a negative tendency concerning the situation within the Chechen Republic.” This information is then employed “to form tendentious public opinion both abroad and in the milieu of so-called human rights defenders in Russia.” Torin suggests that international NGOs should therefore be replaced by Russian NGO’s within Chechnya.