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One soldier was killed and 11 were wounded when two suicide bombers rammed a jeep packed with explosives through the fence of the Interior Ministry camp in Vedeno, south of the region's capital Grozny, a battalion spokesman was quoted as saying by RIA news agency. A Vedeno resident who saw the aftermath of the blast said both attackers were killed in the blast. The woman, who saw the severed head of one of them, said he appeared to be in his teens. The camp, where Interior Ministry troops had been quartered in tents, burned to the ground, she said. Another...

The Russian-backed Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov will inaugurate the "largest mosque in Europe" on October 17, the Russian official news agency Novosty reported. Over 10,000 worshipers will be able to pray inside the mosque, which will be named after the president's father, Ahmad Kadyrov, who was killed in 2004. "The largest mosque in Europe… will by inaugurated on the first day of the International Peacemakers' Conference, titled 'Islam – Religion of Peace and Progress,'" the grand mufti of Chechnya, Sultan Mirzayev, told the press. Mirzayev underlined that approximately 50 countries have already approved their participation in the three-day conference. The...

I've searched around FR a bit looking for anyone asking this question, but haven't found one. Admin, feel free to lock this if I've missed an obvious one. With Russia back to the saber-rattling ways of old, I'm hearing rumbles that some people are re-thinking their presidential vote because they don't think Obama will stand up to the Cold-War type intimidation that the Russians seem to be going back to. I'm hearing some are saying they'll vote McCain because they would rather have him at the helm if a new Cold War with Russia is possibly coming. Any thoughts?

Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov has dismissed former Vostok battalion leader Sulim Yamadayev, a powerful former Chechen rebel at odds with Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, after he fought Georgian troops in South Ossetia, a source in the Chechen administration said Friday. Serdyukov signed an order discharging Yamadayev, who had a federal warrant out for his arrest on murder charges but, in murky circumstances, ended up fighting with Russian troops in their defeat of Georgian forces over control of Tskhinvali, said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue with the media. The order...

Pentagon Makes Fighting Extremism Top Priority Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon on Thursday officially named "the long war" against global extremism as its top priority and pledged to avert any conventional military threat from China or Russia through dialogue. The Defense Department, in a new national defense strategy, also emphasized the need to subordinate military operations to "soft power" initiatives to undermine Islamist militancy by promoting economic, political and social development in vulnerable corners of the world. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped the change would help establish permanent institutional support for counterinsurgency skills...

Terrorists from al-Qaeda have been making chemical and biological weapons in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge, French Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin said on Tuesday. Speaking at a world conference on bio-terrorism in Lyons that was organized by Interpol, he said that “several al-Qaeda cells have been trained in Afghanistan where they have learned to use biological agents including anthrax, ricin and botulism toxins. Later, after the fall of the Taliban regime, those groups continued their experiments in the Pankisi Gorge, on the territory of Georgia, bordering Chechnya,” Interfax news agency reported. The minister added that al-Qaeda terrorists “were able to use...

Kadyrov decided to make a suitable contribution to the anti-Georgian campaign which in Russia has acquired the character of a mass psychosis. The head of Chechnya would not be worthy of the name if he did not outdo in extravagance and hooliganism the Georgian leadership’s most savage critic, Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Back in his native village of Khosi-Yurt, Kadyrov assembled journalists and made several statements. He proposed that Mikheil Saakashvili be sent to the Beijing Olympics as a sprinter, with the explanation that when hiding from a Russian jet fighter the Georgian president had managed to do so with unbelievable swiftness....

Military Learning Between the Chechen Wars By: Michael Coffey The downward spiral of the Russian military that began with Afghanistan is often compared to the U.S. army’s experience in Vietnam. However, unlike the American experience, the conflict did not serve as an impetus for drastic military reform. In fact, the decline of the Soviet army continued through the 1980s, leading to the defeat of the Red Army’s “ghost” in Chechnya in 1996 at the hands of a few rebels. Three years later, President Vladimir Putin ordered the army back into Chechnya. The military did not undergo dramatic transformation in the...

  NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL   MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA       THESIS   Approved for public release; distribution unlimited. THUMPING THE HIVE: RUSSIAN NEOCORTICAL WARFARE IN CHECHNYA   by   Scott E. McIntosh   September 2004         Thesis Advisor:                          M. Tsypkin   Second Reader:                              T. Thomas   ABSTRACT     Since the 1994 Chechen war, analysts have written volumes about the evolution of—and lessons learned from—this ongoing conflict.  Why has success eluded this Cold War superpower in subduing the small Caucasian republic?  Russia has since hiccupped back and forth across the spectrum of conflict in the region and...

  Compare  and contrast Russian Strategy in the First and the Second Chechen wars.  Perhaps the greatest challenge Yeltsin had to face after he had been elected president of the Russian Federation in August 1991was to deal with a country that had 89 regions and autonomous republics, often populated by different national minorities oppressed by the Soviet rule, which sought independence.  Yeltsin’s famous phrase ‘the republics have to take as much sovereignty as they can,’[1] was perhaps the spunk that local leaders needed. However, in one particular case, this would become catastrophic for the FSU.  The Chechen Republic was one of...

COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho -- A University of Idaho graduate student who is under investigation for suspected terrorism ties obtained unauthorized access to a campus lab containing radioactive material, court documents allege. Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, a Saudi national working on his computer science doctoral degree, quietly moved his student office from the Computer Science Department into the school's engineering isotope lab, apparently without his adviser's knowledge, according to the documents. "The investigation of Sami Al-Hussayen has, from its outset, been focused on suspected material support to terrorism, particularly to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network," FBI agent Michael Gnecknow said in the...

"Islam is primarily an ideology. Two ideologies can never get along peacefully on the same territory, not matter how much we would want them to." ... "The question is understandable. For the nations of Europe, the "correct" procedure involves consulting the population, holding referendums or parliamentary elections. And Parliament must sit and devise some laws. For us Muslims, that position is totally absurd. We say that human beings are not capable of devising a just law. We believe that the law has been sent down to earth by the Almighty, by God. Nations, politicians and parliaments have no right to...

Chechnya's pro-Moscow president Ramzan Kadyrov on Saturday called on Russia's military to give up land and buildings it has occupied "without legal basis" in the war-torn republic, Interfax reported. "Chechnya is a full-fledged part of the Russian Federation, all laws apply here, and not only civil authorities must respect the law, but also the military command of units stationed in Chechnya," the news agency quoted the Kremlin-backed strongman as saying. "These army units occupy huge territories and sites, most of them without any legal basis. And when I demand to put all this in order, they report that Kadyrov is...

UNIDENTIFIED gunmen have opened fire on several policemen in Russia's southern region of Ingushetia, killing one and wounding four, Russian media reported. The police officers were shot in Ingushetia's Malgobek district, some 45 km from the capital Magas. "During an attempt to detain them (the gunmen), they escaped into a forest. Their pursuit has been organised," Interfax quoted the Ingushetia Interior Ministry as saying. Russian forces have been combating a growing insurgency in mainly Muslim Ingushetia. The region borders Chechnya, where a pro-Kremlin local commander has dampened a rebellion Russia has been fighting since 1994. Violence flares up almost daily...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's Ministry of Defense plans to cut the size of its Chechen battalions, a general has said, two months after a stand-off with soldiers loyal to Chechnya's Kremlin-backed leader. Groomed by Russian leader Vladimir Putin to be Chechnya's president, Ramzan Kadyrov called for the Ministry of Defense to disband the battle-hardened Vostok battalion and sack its commander after the roadside stand off in April. The Vostok battalion is commanded by Sulim Yamadayev -- one of the few Chechens powerful enough to rival the 31-year-old Kadyrov. Reducing its strength would bolster Kadyrov's power. Russian General Vladimir Shamanov told...

There are a few things Kadyrov won't talk about. The first is the war. When Chechnya fought the first of its two wars for independence from Moscow, Kadyrov and his father fought against the Russians. He shrugs that he was "15, maybe 16" when he led his first militia. He says he didn't have a childhood. He doesn't want to remember those times. The process of switching sides to the Moscow camp -- that, too, is an unwelcome topic. "I was always with the people," he says. "I don't know who changed which side, but I was always with the...

Like one of those dark mysterious beech forests of the Caucasus, Chechnya still contains many secrets and most of what is going on there is hidden from outside view. From a distance, it looks as though war is over and the republic's leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, is firmly in control. Kadyrov is now busy eliminating the threat posed by the last substantial visible armed group operating in Chechnya, the Vostok battalion run by the Yamadayev brothers. Somewhere in the shadows, a much less visible armed resistance numbering perhaps a few hundred men still flickers on in the southeastern mountains, but they...

Over the weekend, Foreign Ministry official Valery Kenyaikin cautioned Georgia against using NATO forces to resolve the territorial conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, saying Moscow would take "all possible measures to protect its citizens if fighting broke out" in these areas. It seems as though Russia is preparing for war with Georgia. A few days ago I returned from Chechnya, where I observed the swift, bloodless routing of the Vostok regiment by military groups loyal to Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. Vostok is a local military unit in Khankala, Chechnya, composed of ethnic Chechens that is formally a part of...

GUDERMES, Russia, April 16 (Reuters) - Rival pro-Russian forces in Chechnya faced each other in a tense standoff on Wednesday after a shootout that left several people dead. Soldiers commanded by pro-Kremlin Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov clashed earlier this week with fighters supporting a rival pro-Russian commander in Gudermes, a town in the east of the mainly Muslim region. Extra armed guards patrolled the president's residence on Wednesday and RIA news agency reported that law enforcement agencies were searching houses belonging to Sulim Yamadayev, the rival commander whose forces had fought Kadyrov's soldiers. A witness living in Gudermes told Reuters...

MOSCOW, April 19 (Reuters) - A dissident Chechen military commander said on Saturday amnestied rebels recruited by Chechnya's pro-Kremlin leader Ramzan Kadyrov were engaged in violence and stood ready for another war with Russia. Sulim Yamadayev, in an interview with Echo Moskvy radio station, described a situation in Chechnya at odds with Kremlin claims that it has re-established control there. Russia fought Chechen rebels in two wars since 1994 which killed thousands. "You think there is order here? This amnestied army goes around with weapons. They do not have to hide and run... They have everything. They are just waiting,"...

AN ALLEGED attempt to kill a former Russian spy who defected to Britain was being investigated by police last night. Oleg Gordievsky was admitted to a hospital in Guildford after falling ill in November last year. And yesterday he claimed he had been poisoned with the highly toxic metal thallium in a botched assassination attempt. Gordievsky, a KGB double agent who spied on Russia for British intelligence during the 1980s, claims he was targeted by a Russian assassin who visited him at his safe house in Surrey. The 69-year-old was unconscious for 34 hours after falling ill last year and...

The militant is known as Abu Ubaida al Masri, and charting his path reveals his vulnerabilities and those of the terrorist group. COPENHAGEN -- If Al Qaeda strikes the West in the coming months, it's likely the mastermind will be a stocky Egyptian explosives expert with two missing fingers. His alias is Abu Ubaida al Masri. Hardly anyone has heard of him outside a select circle of anti-terrorism officials and Islamic militants. He has overseen the major plots that the network needs to stay viable, investigators say: the London transportation bombings in 2005, a foiled transatlantic "spectacular" aimed at U.S.-bound...

More than 4,000 people are facing eviction to make room for the 2014 Winter Olympics in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, according to campaigners, who say that many will receive little or no compensation. “My family has lived on this land for five generations,” said Dmitry Drofichev, a farmer. “We are being offered a fraction of what the land is worth. They’ll have to bulldoze me and the house to make me move.” The authorities have already begun forcibly removing people from areas where Olympic facilities are to be built. Fifteen families of refugees from a war in the...

SHALI, Russia, March 19 (Reuters) - At the barracks nestled in the Caucasus mountains, the Chechen military officer popped a chunk of moist, fatty mutton into his mouth and leaned across the table. "We now have new weapons, new armoured personnel carriers, sniper rifles and anti-mine equipment," he said wiping the grease from his mouth with the back of his hand. "The Russians have re-equipped and trained my men." This is the trade-off that has helped Russian President Vladimir Putin subdue a separatist insurgency in Chechnya that raged for more than a decade. Moscow has armed and equipped a local...

Moscow, March 18 (RIA Novosti) Russia has said that the recent violence in Tibet is linked with the recognition by some states of the independence of Serbia's breakaway province, Kosovo. In an interview published Tuesday in the Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the recognition of Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence by many countries, including the US and the majority of the European Union (EU) states, had 'already reverberated in many regions.' He said that the Kosovo issue was linked to recent riots in Tibet and demands for greater autonomy by ethnic Albanians in Macedonia. 'There are...

August 7, 2004THE OVERVIEWBin Laden Sent Suspect to U.S., Officials Say By DOUGLAS JEHL and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM ASHINGTON, Aug. 6 - American intelligence officials now believe that Issa al-Hindi, the alleged Qaeda operative now in British custody, was dispatched to the United States in early 2001 by the mastermind of the Sept. 11 plot at the direction of Osama bin Laden to case potential targets in New York City, senior government officials said Friday. The officials said that Mr. Hindi was the same person as the figure identified in the Sept. 11 commission report as Issa al-Britani. The...

The secret war On the North-West Frontier, soldiers are trying to tighten the noose around bin Laden's forces. But in Europe and America, there is no clear enemy to fight - yet every expert knows that a terrorist atrocity is coming Mark Townsend in Tangier, John Hooper in Madrid, Greg Bearup in Peshawar, Paul Harris in Washington, Peter Beaumont in Baghdad, Antony Barnett, Martin Bright, Jason Burke and Nick Pelham in London Sunday March 21, 2004 The Observer There were shadows in the rocks. As the 12 US Special Forces soldiers arrived at a remote mountain region in eastern Afghanistan...

GROZNY, December 3 (RIA Novosti) - With more than half of the vote counted in Russia's Chechen Republic, the ruling United Russia party leads the polls with over 99%, the head of the republic's election commission said on Monday. Russia held elections to the State Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, on Sunday. According to preliminary national data, with 85% of the vote in, the United Russia party, whose candidate list was headed by President Putin, has received 63.3% of the vote nationwide. Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov had previously told foreign journalists that he saw no need for any official...

ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia (AP) - A passenger bus caught fire and exploded in Russia's troubled North Caucasus Thursday, killing at least five people and wounding 12, emergency and police officials said. Investigators said they considered terrorism the likely cause. The incident took place in the North Ossetia region which is plagued by violence from feuding criminal groups, remnants of Chechen separatist fighters and other militant groups that target government and police. But authorities did not point to any specific group that is suspected. The bus traveling from the southern city of Pyatigorsk was near a police post on the administrative border...

An opposition politician running in Russian parliamentary elections was shot and seriously wounded on Wednesday as he entered his house in the southern Russian region of Dagestan... Farid Babayev, who will lead the regional list for the liberal anti-Kremlin Yabloko party was in a serious condition in hospital, RIA novosti news agency reported after an unidentified gunman fired on him in the regional capital Makhachkala. "The incident occurred at about 10 p.m., not far from his home. Farid Babayev is now in hospital in a serious condition," ... Dagestan is in the North Caucasus, next to Chechnya,

Chechen rebel urges global jihadBy Richard Galpin BBC News, Grozny A Chechen Muslim rebel leader is reported to have described the US, Britain and Israel as legitimate targets in a jihad, or holy war. Doku Umarov said it was not just the Russian security forces who deserved to be attacked. The separatist leader said all those who fight Muslims anywhere in the world were enemies. Other Chechen separatists have denounced the statement, which was sent to US-backed Radio Liberty. It was made earlier this month, apparently to coincide with the birthday of Russian President Vladimir Putin, but a video of...

European Parliament erases truth about Chechnya, say Polish MEPs Thursday, October 4. 2007 Polish members of the European Parliament are claiming that a photo exhibition of Russian crimes in Chechnya they organized has been censored and are demanding its reinstatement. A photo exhibition in the European Parliament presenting Russian crimes in Chechnya has been removed at the motion of a Hungarian socialist Szabolcs Fazakas who is in charge of exhibitions in the EP buildings. Konrad Szymański, Polish MEP from the Law and Justice (PiS), a co-organiser of the exhibition protested against the decision and called it a shameful act of...

Murders, shoot-outs in the streets and "mop-up operations" shatter island of stability. By Umalt Dudayev in Karabulak (CRS No. 412, 27-Sept-07) The scene at the entrance to Ingushetia's second-largest town Karabulak is menacing. The traffic checkpoint has been reinforced and is now manned by federal troops in armoured vehicles. The road is obstructed by concrete blocks forcing drivers to weave around before approaching the striped barrier, where a warning sign says, "Drivers, stop! Turn off your engine and allow your car to be inspected." An armoured personnel carrier covers the road while soldiers and policemen select vehicles, check the passengers'...

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- The toughest fighters confronting Canada's Van Doos in Afghanistan are not Afghans but guerrillas from the volatile Russian republic of Chechnya. That is the conclusion of a veteran Canadian infantryman who spends most of his time forward deployed in the Panjwei/Zahri districts establishing relationships with tribal elders and making security assessments. "The Chechens are hard core. They are the best we face," said the soldier, a Montrealer who works in a secretive cell devoted to what the Canadian battle group calls Information Operations and what other armies sometimes call Information Warfare. "There are also lots of fighters...

Polish border guards have found the bodies of three Chechen sisters - the youngest aged six - who died in the mountains on the border with Ukraine. The guards found their exhausted mother on Thursday clutching a fourth daughter - a two-year-old - near the border.

CBNNews.com - September 2004 in Beslan: Islamic radicals stormed a school and took about 1,000 teachers, students, and parents hostage. Russian troops surrounded the building. At the end of a three-day siege, more than 300 people - half of them children - were dead. The people were devastated. The vicious attack created deep anger among the citizens of Beslan, and a desire for revenge against the people of Chechnya, where the terrorists came from. But one Christian church near Beslan is showing compassion instead. Chechnya, a nearby republic, had been fighting since 1994 to gain its independence from Russia. The...

COPENHAGEN, Denmark—A former Guantanamo detainee has been arrested in Denmark on suspicion of withdrawing $18,900 from other people's accounts using stolen debit cards and PIN codes, police said Thursday. Slimane Hadj Abderrahmane, a Danish citizen, was released from the Guantanamo Bay detention center in 2004 after nearly two years in captivity. Abderrahmane, 34, was arrested Wednesday and ordered held in jail for two weeks on preliminary fraud and theft charges, police said. He is suspected of stealing three debit cards—two corporate cards and one personal—and the corresponding PIN codes. Police did not say how he stole them. They said Abderrahmane,...

Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov will be the first Russian citizen to take part in the traditional ceremony of the washing of the Kaaba, the cube-like black shrine in Saudi Arabia’s Mecca which millions of Muslims worldwide face in their daily prayers. The Chechen leader is also expected to meet King Abdullah on Tuesday during the official part of his visit to Saudi Arabia. “It’s very important for our people and for Russia, as the world press tends to say a religious war is going on in Chechnya and that Muslims support terrorists. In our republic we have a Muslim majority,...

MOSCOW (Thomson Financial) - Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov accused Moscow in an interview published Friday of hoarding oil and tax revenue needed to rebuild the war-shattered republic. 'Everything is ruined here, and the funds aren't being spread around. The federal centre takes our income. Oil, taxes -- they take them both, and tell us: 'Okay, build',' Kadyrov told daily newspaper Izvestia. The 30-year-old regional leader, who was appointed to his post by President Vladimir Putin in February, lashed out at state-run oil giant Rosneft for registering its Chechen subsidiary in Moscow, robbing Chechnya of tax revenue. 'For the over 2...

In the Soviet times Chechnya attracted tourists from the whole country, but after the armed conflict with Russia the republic got reputation of a crisis spot. Despite the current post-war conditions Chechnya intends to develop its travel infrastructure and to turn into “Chechen Switzerland”.

“Chechen Switzerland” – that is the way president of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov calls the villages that earlier appeared in military news. The first tourists expected to come to the republic in the future are students of biological, historical, and geological faculties.

GROZNY, Russia (AP) — Police killed the Chechen rebel leader allegedly acting on a tip from within his network and dealing a possible blow to efforts to spread the increasingly Islam-inspired insurgency throughout southern Russia. Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev was shot Saturday during a raid on a hideout in his Chechen hometown of Argun, nine miles east of Grozny. He had been planning a terror attack in Argun to coincide with the Group of Eight summit of leading industrialized nations in St. Petersburg in mid-July, the Moscow-backed Chechen premier claimed. Wearing combat fatigues, Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov posed for TV cameras next...

According to former Detroit Public Schools Superintendent Eddie Green, Kifah Jayyousi is “a great guy, one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.” While Green was superintendent, Jayyousi oversaw the Detroit school district’s capital improvement program, which had a $1.5 billion budget. Jayyousi is now charged, according to the Detroit Free Press , with “conspiring to kidnap, maim and murder by providing money, recruits and equipment for Islamic struggles in Bosnia , Kosovo and Chechnya from 1993 to 2001.” He could get life in prison. Christopher Paul, a martial arts instructor at a mosque in Columbus , Ohio , is...

CHECHNYA - May Day, the former Soviet celebration of “International Workers' Solidarity", later renamed to “Day of Spring and Labour", has been marked in Chechnya on the scale of Soviet times. To the accompaniment of loud music, festive columns of workers, students, intellectuals, Grozny residents, members of the regional branches of the Unified Russia and Fair Russia parties and many more marched in close formation through the centre of the Chechen capital carrying placards and banners. The republic’s leadership, headed by the Moscow-backed President Ramzan Kadyrov, stood on an improvised podium and welcomed the participants of the rally, who according...

GROZNY (Reuters) - At least 18 soldiers and air crew were killed when their helicopter was shot down in Russia's volatile Chechnya region on Friday, Russian news agencies and the military said. The incident appeared to be the deadliest single attack for over a year by Chechnya's insurgents. They have fought a 12-year war against Moscow's rule but in the past few years most of their leaders have been killed and their attacks curtailed. A spokesman for the military prosecutor's office told Reuters: "At the present time the death toll is 18 people -- the crew and troops." Officials earlier...

GROZNY. April 27 (Interfax-AVN) - According to preliminary information, 17 people were killed in a crash of an Mi-8 helicopter carrying a landing party in southern Chechnya, a source in the headquarters of the joint group of forces in the North Caucasus told Interfax-AVN on Friday. "Three crewmembers and 14 soldiers died. According to preliminary information, the helicopter was hit from the ground," the source said. A special operation to eliminate an illegal armed group has been under way to the south from the Shatoi town. Three Mi-8 helicopters with landing parties were sent to the district. One of...

April 1, 2007 Putin hands Chechnya to his ‘little Saddam’ Mark Franchetti, Moscow As the owner of a pet tiger, and a man who likes to show off his rocket propelled grenade firing skills in public, Ramzan Kadyrov, 30, could hardly be expected to celebrate modestly when he is inaugurated as president of Chechnya this week. It promises to be the most ostentatious event seen in the war-ravaged republic. Patricia Kaas, the French pop diva, has been invited to sing at the ceremony before more than 1,500 guests. The bill for the banquet alone, which will include caviar and champagne...

GROZNY, Russia – Chechnya's newly installed, Kremlin-backed president accused federal authorities Friday of torturing detainees, echoing claims that have long been made by Russian and international rights groups. Ramzan Kadyrov's comments appeared to be an attempt to boost his popularity and deflect blame from his paramilitary security force, which has faced accusations of abductions, torture and other abuses. Kadyrov said inmates at a detention facility controlled by ORB-2, a unit of the federal Interior Ministry's southern district, were “systematically subjected to torture.” He said regional prosecutors had opened an investigation into the situation at the facility in the town of...

GROZNY, March 19 (RIA Novosti) - All illegal armed groups in Chechnya will be eliminated within a two-month period, the president of the troubled North Caucasus republic said Monday. Ramzan Kadyrov, elected Chechen president earlier this year, said "the counterterrorism operation in the region has been completed and today we are fighting criminal [not terrorist] elements in the Republic of Chechnya." Earlier Monday Colonel General Arkady Yedelev, a Russian deputy interior minister, said that currently 37 illegal armed groups, consisting of about 450 militants, were still active in Chechnya. Although the active phase of the North Caucasus antiterrorist campaign officially...

THIS WEEK Vladimir Putin delivered another clear message about the kind of state Russia is becoming. He did so by nominating as the new president of the republic of Chechnya a man named Ramzan Kadyrov -- an unspeakably savage and corrupt warlord. Mr. Kadyrov has done Mr. Putin a great service: Using his own militia -- gang might be a better term -- he has imposed order in the name of the Kremlin on most of the rebellious republic, allowing the Russian president to declare victory in the war he started more than seven years ago. The Chechen's reward is...