CHECHNYA LINKS LIBRARY

The Week in Brief: May 28 - June 3, 2001

The President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Aslan Maskhadov, said in an interview with Anna Politkovskaya from Novaya Gazeta that eventual peace talks with Russia were inevitable but there was no one yet in Moscow willing to hold them. He added that he was ready for talks with no preconditions, which would determine mutual relations between Russia and Chechnya.

Russian presidential aide Sergei Yastrzhembski announced that 3,096 federal servicemen have been killed in Chechnya since the beginning of the current campaign. This number is in contrast with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov’s announcement on May 28 according to which the Center for Registration of Servicemen lists 2,682 killed soldiers since August 1999 (including 2,026 Defense Ministry servicemen). "This center has no information about the losses of other defense and security agencies taking part in the operation," the office of the presidential aide reacted.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has temporarily suspended its activities and movements in Chechnya. The decision comes after an incident in which a ICRC local employee was wounded at a Russian federal checkpoint in Grozny.

Amnesty International presented a report stating that “Russian federal forces are responsible for gross violations of human rights in the Chechen Republic,” while the investigations of these violations are conducted on a “very narrow scale”.

A majority of Danish MPs urged the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Denmark to take necessary steps to file a suit against Russia with the European Court for Human Rights.

Chechen refugees currently living in Ingushetia must return to Chechnya by the end of June if they want to receive government food supplies, officials from the pro-Russian Chechen government said.

Deputy director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the head of military operations in Chechnya, German Ugryumov, died of a heart attack in the Khankala military base.

The chairman of the International affairs committee of the Russian Duma, Dmitry Rogozin, proposed a referendum in Chechnya on the constitutional system and status of the republic.

No major events.

Russian human rights activist, Victor Alekseyevich Popkov, whose car was attacked in Chechnya on April 18 by unknown assailants, died of his wounds in a hospital in Krasnogorsk near Moscow.

OSCE monitoring post was reopened on Georgia-Chechnya border. The Chechen section of the border is monitored by 39 observers whose mandate has been extended till November 15, 2001.

Chief commander of the federal forces in the Northern Caucasus, general Genadiy Troshev, supported the idea of public executions of Chechen fighters. According to Troshev, an award of up to 1 million USD for apprehension of the top Chechen commanders “could [also] facilitate the peace in the republic.”