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Abducted and murdered on Wednesday, hours after her organisation backed calls for Vladimir Putin to face trial over atrocities in Chechnya. Natalya Estemirova, who won numerous international awards for her work, was bundled into a car as she left her home in Grozny, the Chechen capital. Her body was later found by the side of a road in the neighbouring province of Ingushetia. She had been shot twice in the head at close range. Mrs Estemirova, a single mother in her early 40s, was the seventh opponent of Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed Chechen president, to have been murdered in the...

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to the Georgian breakaway region of South Ossetia has not contributed to promoting stability following last year’s brief war, the US State Department said Tuesday. Medvedev made the controversial trip to South Ossetia Monday and offered financial and military support in defiance of the West and the Georgian government. “Certainly I don’t think that it was any kind of step forward in terms of establishing stability in the region,” US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters. The situation in Georgia over the separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia has been a source of...

MOSCOW - Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov said he had been ordered by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to fight insurgents in the neighboring region of Ingushetia after its leader was gravely wounded in a bomb attack. Kadyrov's harsh tactics have brought relative stability to Chechnya since he was elected in 2007 after more than a decade of war. But fellow Kremlin appointees have failed to stem spikes in violence in neighboring Dagestan and Ingushetia. With Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov fighting for his life in hospital, Kadyrov said he had been ordered by Medvedev to run cross-border operations. "He told me to...

NAZRAN, Russia -- Gunmen killed a former top government minister in Ingushetia as he stood outside his home in the violent southern Russian region Saturday, law enforcement officials said. .... Two gunmen sprayed Aushev with automatic weapon fire as he got out of his car at the gate outside his home in the region's main city, Nazran, around 6:30 p.m. (1430 GMT), the regional Interior Ministry's press service said. He died en route to the hospital. Aushev was vice premier under former Ingush President Murat Zyazikov, a KGB agent who was widely reviled by many Ingush for his repressive policies....

MOSCOW, April 7 (RIA Novosti) - Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov has said that the North Caucasus republic owes its very existence to the efforts of Russian Prime Minster Vladimir Putin. "If it were not for Putin, Chechnya would not exist," the 32-year-old Chechen leader said in an interview published on Tuesday in the Rossiiskaya Gazeta government daily. "He saved our people with his strong-willed decisions," Kadyrov said. "I know this history - I personally participated in it. If it were not for Putin, we would not be here." Both Kadyrov and his late father, the republic's first president, sided with...

The Russian authorities have confirmed a prominent opponent of the pro-Kremlin Chechen President, Ramzan Kadyrov, was shot dead in Dubai on Saturday. Diplomats said Sulim Yamadayev's body had been identified by his relatives. Mr Yamadayev fell out with Mr Kadyrov last year and was sacked as commander of an elite security forces battalion.

Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, is facing fresh international scrutiny after a powerful Chechen warlord who fell out with the Kremlin was assassinated in Dubai. The murder of Sulim Yamadayev could trigger renewed violence in Chechnya and will cause alarm outside Russia after a series of similar assassinations in Istanbul and Vienna. Mr Yamadayev, the leading rival of Chechnya's Kremlin-backed president, Ramzan Kadyrov, was shot dead in the car park of a housing development in Dubai where he had been living under a false name since December. While there were contradictory details about the killing, experts on Chechnya alleged...

MOSCOW (AFP)--Russia is considering ending the decade-long effective state of war in Chechnya, an official said Thursday, in a move that could see the withdrawal of thousands of troops from the once restive republic. The decree on the start of a "counter-terrorist operation" was passed in Chechnya under late president Boris Yeltsin in 1999 just months before he resigned and installed Vladimir Putin at the helm. "Such an issue is being worked out but it's too early to talk about the time frame," a Kremlin official told AFP. The official's remarks came in response to a surprise announcement by Ramzan...

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin held a tense meeting with Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov on Friday, trading thinly veiled barbs about whose responsibility it was to rebuild the impoverished republic. While the government aims to cut the budget for regional subsidies this year, Kadyrov has been pressing for more federal support. President Dmitry Medvedev said in February that regional leaders who were not meeting expectations on handling the crisis would be called to Moscow for meetings. Putin opened the meeting by asking whether Kadyrov's "discussion with the Finance Ministry was finished," without elaborating. "Everything is great with the Finance Ministry now,"...

One week ago I posted about how the Russian government has allowed Islamic rule in Chechnya. Since then six Russian officers were killed in a bomb attack and now Chechnya leader Ramzan Kadyrov in an effort to strengthen Islam is offering a cash reward to anyone who has a baby on Mohammad's birthday and names him Mohammad.

Kavkaz TV, the video arm of Kavkaz-Center, the radical Islamist Chechen rebel website, this past week posted a video clip in which a young Chechen man, Ruslan Khalidov, claimed that Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov employed him to kill Magomed Ocherhadji, a leader of the large Chechen exile community in Norway. As Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported on March 5, Khalidov said in the video that he did not carry out the killing but that he had been tortured and threatened in an attempt to force him to comply. “They even did things that I’m ashamed to talk about,” he...

The bullnecked president of Chechnya emerged from afternoon prayers at the mosque and with chilling composure explained why seven young women who had been shot in the head deserved to die. Ramzan Kadyrov said the women, whose bodies were found dumped by the roadside, had "loose morals" and were rightfully shot by male relatives in honor killings. "If a woman runs around and if a man runs around with her, both of them are killed," Kadyrov told journalists in the capital of this Russian republic...

Analysts say Islamist extremists have infiltrated the region and that worsening poverty may drive people towards the rebels who have previously sent kidnappers and suicide bombers to attack Russian cities. Financial support is a tool for the Kremlin to dampen support for the rebels but Russia's cash reserves have shrunk by some 40 percent to about $385 billion (270 billion pounds) since last summer. In Russia's original budget for 2009, Chechnya's government said it had been promised around 24.5 billion roubles (474 million pounds) -- worth about $1 billion before the currency devalued by about a third. The other North...

At the entrance to Chechnya’s State University in the capital of Grozny, a gaggle of female students can usually be seen fiddling with a newly mandatory item of clothing: headscarves. Students who do not arrive with a scarf – perhaps half – stand outside under the gaze of the security guards and, using an elaborate array of hairpins, put theirs on. Many girls are the first in three generations to cover their heads, and it does not come naturally to some. The Soviet Union even encouraged women to burn their headscarves, to discourage its officially atheist youth from falling under...

GROZNY, Russia (Reuters) - Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov opened one of Europe's biggest mosques in the rebuilt capital of the southern Russian region Friday, saying it was proof Russian rule and Islam can go together. The mosque, named "The Heart of Chechnya" and constructed by Turkish builders, can host up to 10,000 worshippers. Its minarets rise as high as 62 m (200 ft) and the complex extends over 14 hectares (35 acres), including a vast garden. "With the start of the Chechen war, the enemies of Islam and foes of Russia alleged that Russia wages war against Islam and the...

GUDERMES, Russia (Reuters) - A Chechen warlord on Thursday accused the Russian region's pro-Kremlin leader of killing his brother and vowed to take revenge, pitching the two most powerful men in Chechnya against each other. Chechnya's pro-Kremlin leader Ramzan Kadyrov denied any role in the shooting. About 70 to 80 men -- mainly family members and loyal fighters -- attended the funeral of Ruslan Yamadayev in the town of Gudermes east of the Chechen capital Grozny. Gunmen killed the former parliamentary deputy as he drove through the center of Moscow Wednesday evening. "I accuse Ramzan Kadyrov of the murder of...

Grozny, which I last saw as an immense heap of rubble, is now a truly impressive sight, with fine modern apartment blocks and a beautiful Turkish-built mosque, modeled on the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, towering over the main square. Grozny as it now stands is a vast improvement on the city as it stood before the war of 1994, when it was a dirty, run-down Soviet industrial city with grim, shabby architecture, very few amenities—and no visible mosques at all. ... It may, however, have been a help in the reconstruction that the current population of 228,000 is less than...

Gudermes, September 11, Interfax - The Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov criticized the USA foreign policy and stated that Washington provoked aggression against South Ossetia and insulted all Muslim world with its attacks against Iraq. "They (the USA - IF) provoked Mikhail Saakashvili to unleash war against South Ossetia. I don't think the United States of America have any future with such leaders. I'm ill disposed to the USA leaders, while I sincerely respect people of the USA," Kadyrov said in Gudermes at his meeting with the Valdai discussion club. The Chechen head believes the USA contributes to enhancing terrorist threat....

GROZNY -- Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov has accused the United States of fomenting unrest in the Caucasus and emboldening Georgia to launch an attack on South Ossetia. Speaking to members of the Valdai Discussion Club at his residence near Grozny, he said Russia's crushing defeat of Georgian troops in their brief war was the appropriate response. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili "was dancing to someone else's tune," Kadyrov said during the one-hour briefing. "He started a war, an inhuman war. ... The United States was testing Russia through Georgia, and Russia reacted decisively." He backed Moscow's recognition of South Ossetia and...

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...