On Monday, Russian forces killed Shamil Basayev, the Chechen terrorist responsible for the Beslan attack, in counterinsurgent operations in Ingushetia. Ingush Deputy Prime Minister Bashir Aushev confirmed his death. “Fragments of the bodies of two militants were found on the scene of the explosion. Basayev’s body has been identified through some of the fragments, including his head,” Aushev told Interfax. Putin said that Basayev “deserved retribution” for Beslan and for taking hostages in Budyonnovsk in 1995. Chechen President Alu Alkhanov called the killing a moment where Chechnya could finally turn “one of the blackest pages in ÄitsÅ history” and that…

Shamil Basayev, the radical field commander who ordered the hostage-taking of Beslan schoolchildren, has been appointed vice president of the Chechen seperatist government by the new president. Which means, should President Dolu Umarov be killed, he will become the new leader of the separatist movement. In so few words, that is not good. PRAGUE, June 28, 2006 (RFE/RL) — The man who claimed responsibility for the 2004 Beslan school siege, rebel field commander Shamil Basayev, has been appointed vice president of the breakaway republic’s separatist government, putting Russia’s most-wanted man next in line to become separatist president. Basayev’s appointment, first…

Not long following the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Russian government has killed its own most wanted terrorist, Chechen rebel leader Adbul-Khalim Sadulayev. PRAGUE, June 17, 2006 (RFE/RL) — Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov announced on June 17 the death during a special operation in the town of Argun, east of Grozny, of Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev, who succeeded Aslan Maskhadov as Chechen president and resistance commander following Maskhadov’s killing in March 2005. Akhmad Zakayev, whom Sadulayev named foreign minister of the Chechen Republic Ichkeria (ChRI) on May 27, confirmed Sadulayev’s death in a telephone interview with RFE/RL’s North Caucasus Service…

It started back in September 2005 when 18 children from the Chechen village of Staroshchedrinskaya were hospitalized with signs of poisoning, and then a month later 8 more children from the same school were hospitalized with the same symptoms. In December 2005 13 more children from the Chechen Shelkovskaya district were hospitalized with very similar symptoms. Since December more than 50 other children have developed the same symptoms, including children in the Chechen villages of Shelkozavodskaya and Starogladovskaya. The symptoms are fatigue, asphyxia, headaches, convulsions and hysteria. Some children also reported memory loss and hallucinations. All most all of the…

It looks like more truth is coming out about the Russian government’s 1) disregard for the hostages and 2) its attempt to cover up the raid on the Beslan school that was under siege. While the Russian government maintains that it stormed the school after terrorists explosives went off, new evidence shows that this was impossible, as the bombs were hooked up to the power supply and the electricity was cut before the explosions were heard. On 1 September, 2004, Ms Alikov went to make a picture report of the 1 September ceremony at school No 1, which was how…

The North Ossetian parliamentary investigation into the Beslan massacre is out, and guess who caused the fabled first explosion? Last week, the results of a North Ossetian parliamentary investigation into the terrorist attack in Beslan were made public. The report went largely unnoticed. The pro-government media shied away from a number of awkward conclusions, while the opposition was dissatisfied with the level of invective directed at the government of President Vladimir Putin. There is no question that the parliamentary commission, headed by Stanislav Kesayev, deputy speaker of the North Ossetian legislature, came under enormous pressure. A good deal was also…

Hey, why is only President Putin and his entourage of ass-kissers dancing? That’s because the first parliamentary elections in Chechnya since 1997 were held on Sunday, in what the dear leaders over in Moscow are hailing as the last legal step toward restoring the region. It’s all a flash-by cinematic sequence for those watching in the West, while on the ground the situation continues to deteriorate with democracy nowhere in sight. Officials are inflating turnout by the double-digits, the winning candidates were all hand-picked by the Kremlin, and it seems like the majority of voters were Russian soldiers. Doesn’t seem…