North Caucasus Weekly (formerly Chechnya Weekly), The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
December 11 marked the tenth anniversary of the Russian military intervention that began the first of the two modern Russo-Chechen wars. Russian, Western and Chechen media alike featured commentaries on the start of then President Boris Yeltsin's campaign to “restore constitutional order” in the breakaway republic and what has happened over the intervening decade.
North Caucasus Weekly (formerly Chechnya Weekly), The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
Two thousand demonstrators marched in Istanbul, Turkey to protest President Vladimir Putin's visit to Ankara, Newsru.com reported on December 7. The demonstrators carried placards reading “Murderer Putin!” and “Get Out of Turkey!” A group of protesters from among Turkey's large community with roots in the Caucasus laid wreaths at the Russian consulate in Istanbul.
Topic:
Security and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Turkey, Caucasus, Asia, and Istanbul
North Caucasus Weekly (formerly Chechnya Weekly), The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
Viktor Alksnis, one of the Russian parliament's most strident ultra-nationalists, harshly assailed the Union of Committees of Soldiers' Mothers last week for its recent offer to help promote peace negotiations in Chechnya. Alksnis, a member of the pro-Kremlin Rodina (Motherland) party, called on the federal procuracy to investigate that human-rights movement's sources of funding. The clear implication was that the soldiers' mothers are in league with western forces deliberately seeking to destroy the Russian military.
North Caucasus Weekly (formerly Chechnya Weekly), The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
The federal government has no visible long-term strategy for handling the crisis in the North Caucasus, one of Russia's leading specialists in the region told correspondent Dmitry Taratorin of Novye izvestia in an interview published on October 15. “The federal center's policy for the Caucasus can be stated exhaustively in the phrase 'we have power, so we don't need wisdom,'” said Sergei Arutiunov, director of the section for the study of the peoples of the Caucasus in Russian Academy of Science's Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology.
North Caucasus Weekly (formerly Chechnya Weekly), The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
Further confirmation that the Beslan terrorists killed schoolboys, not just grown men, in cold blood came in an October 4 article in Novaya gazeta by Kseniya Leonova, who interviewed 14-year-old ex-hostage Andrei Kuznetsov and his mother. Andrei is convinced that his short height saved his life; he said that the terrorists forced his taller schoolmates along with the adult male hostages to carry boxes of weapons up from the basement—”and then they shot many of them.”
North Caucasus Weekly (formerly Chechnya Weekly), The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
One of the most striking features of the Beslan atrocity and its aftermath has been the unwillingness of Russia's top leadership to state clearly and candidly what it knows, or even what it thinks it knows. Though officials have repeatedly made with an air of great certitude statements that later turned out to be untrue—or could be seen to be manifestly untrue even while those officials were making them—most often these statements have come from mid-echelon officials, not from the very top. Vladimir Putin's public stance has shown a combination of fanaticism and evasiveness. Hence the importance of the detailed oral report to Putin by Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov, broadcast in full by the state-controlled electronic media on September 8.
North Caucasus Weekly (formerly Chechnya Weekly), The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
One of the most striking features of the Beslan atrocity and its aftermath has been the unwillingness of Russia's top leadership to state clearly and candidly what it knows, or even what it thinks it knows. Though officials have repeatedly made with an air of great certitude statements that later turned out to be untrue—or could be seen to be manifestly untrue even while those officials were making them—most often these statements have come from mid-echelon officials, not from the very top. Vladimir Putin's public stance has shown a combination of fanaticism and evasiveness. Hence the importance of the detailed oral report to Putin by Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov, broadcast in full by the state-controlled electronic media on September 8.
North Caucasus Weekly (formerly Chechnya Weekly), The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
As readers will recall from the July 28 issue of Chechnya Weekly, the strongest rival to the Kremlin's preferred candidate in this coming weekend's special election for the presidency of Chechnya's pro- Moscow administration was forced out of the race last month. The election authorities claimed that the details in Malik Saidullaev's passport were not fully accurate. In an August 5 article for Novaya gazeta entitled “Passportgate,” Orkhan Dzhemal has found some piquant details about the passport of Kremlin favorite Alu Alkhanov.
North Caucasus Weekly (formerly Chechnya Weekly), The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
On July 22, the election officials of Chechnya's pro-Moscow administration formally rejected the registration of Malik Saidullaev as a candidate in the republic's special presidential election scheduled for the end of August. The pro-Moscow authorities thus removed from contention the one serious competitor to Kremlin-anointed candidate Alu Alkhanov, who is now being given saturation, Putinstyle coverage by the state-controlled broadcast media.
North Caucasus Weekly (formerly Chechnya Weekly), The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
A mine exploded in Grozny on July 13 just as a large, highly guarded convoy was passing which included the car of Sergei Abramov, who has of course been acting president of Chechnya's pro-Moscow administration since the assassination of Akhmad Kadyrov more than two months ago. Abramov, who was riding an armored Volga limousine, was not harmed—but one of his bodyguards in an accompanying car was killed and another wounded. Abramov's adviser Andrei Aleksintsev was also seriously wounded. An official of the republic's Interior Ministry told journalists that the mine was probably detonated by a remote control.