25 January 2005 -- The international media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has criticized a court decision against a Russian journalist.
21 January 2005 -- Russian President Vladimir Putin today called for "serious restructuring" of the state's programs to ensure security to citizens.
18 January 2005 -- The retrial of four Russian military officers accused of killing six Chechen civilians began today in Rostov-na-Donu in southern Russia.
17 January 2005 -- A local official in Daghestan said today the bodies of four gunmen killed in an hours-long firefight with Russian security forces in the Caucasus republic have been recovered from the ruins of a house destroyed in the assault.
Ramzan Kadyrov (center) at his father's funeral in May Since the death of his father, Akhmad-hadji Kadyrov, in a terrorist bombing on 9 May, 28-year-old Chechen First Deputy Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov has emerged as the most powerful and the most feared man in Chechnya despite his lack of formal education and the alleged involvement of his security force in the systematic abduction, torture, and execution of Chechen civilians.
More damage from Abu Ghurayb (file photo) Human Rights Watch says the U.S. policy of "coercive interrogations" of terrorism suspects and international inaction on the crisis in Sudan's Darfur region pose major threats to the global human rights system. In its annual report, the human rights watchdog calls for the Bush administration to appoint a special prosecutor to determine responsibility for the abuses in Iraq's Abu Ghurayb prison. But a defender of the administration says the rights group has exaggerated U.S. treatment of detainees and ignored the circumstances under which new interrogation policies were conceived. (Click here --> /featuresarticle/2005/01/e8a02914-5d5f-429c-bcea-62ed36d63042.html to see Part 2 of RFE/RL's report on the Human Rights Watch report.)
11 January 2005 -- A large-scale security operation is under way in several districts of the Russian republic of Ingushetia today after an attack on a military barracks wounded four Russian troops.
8 January 2005 -- Russia's security service says four suspected militants were killed today in a shootout in the southern republic of Ingushetia.
6 January 2005 -- Georgia announced that it has started releasing four Chechens arrested in 2002 along Georgia's border with Russia. Moscow had sought to have the four extradited to face charges.
5 January 2005 -- An official with the pro-Moscow Chechen administration was cited today as reporting that 14 Russian soldiers and at least three local Chechen troops have been killed in a series of incidents in Chechnya over the last two days.
1 January 2005 -- More than 1,000 residents of Chechnya's war-ravaged capital celebrated New Year's today, dancing and singing around a holiday tree erected in the city center.
Putin aired his views on a number of topics (file photo) Prague, 23 December 2004 (RFE/RL) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin today used his annual Kremlin press conference to address many of the issues that made headlines in Russia and abroad in 2004.
Load more