Fear, insecurity rise since Theater siege; ’We are the new Jews,’ imam says. Many Russian Muslims compare their fear today with that felt in Soviet times. With Imam Yakub Valiullin is his mother, Zainab, who saw a mosque destroyed.

In November, residents of the Chechen capital received address signs for their homes. The street name and house number were written out in large white letters on a blue background — easy to read even from a distance.

On several occasions since the second Chechen conflict began in 1999, Russian warplanes have allegedly violated Georgian airspace and attacked ground targets. While denying these allegations, Russian authorities have threatened to send troops into Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge to hunt Chechen fighters said to be operating there.

There has been another big scandal at the Defense Ministry. This time at its epicenter — Gennady Troshev, commander of the North Caucasus Military District and hero of the Chechen war. He has turned down the defense minister’s offer (read — his chief’s order) to quit Rostov-na-Donu and head the Siberian Military District.

North Caucasus Military District Commander Gennadiy Troshev is, according to Izvestia’s information, seriously intending to contest the presidency of the Chechen Republic. The general has a real chance of winning the election, which will be held after the Chechen Constitution has been adopted. Troshev’s candidacy could suit both the Kremlin and the majority of Chechens, who are put off by inter- clan enmity. By publicly refusing appointment as commander of the Siberian Military District, General Troshev has set himself up in opposition to the Defense Ministry. A further military career is now closed to him. The «trench general» has moved over to the ranks of the «political heavyweights», following in the footsteps of Lev Rokhlin and Aleksandr Lebed.

As the war goes on, fundamentalist Islamists in Chechnya are becoming bolder and more violent.

The controversy over the nomination of Russian Prime Minister Kasyanov as a candidate for the post of president of the Russian Federation received an unexpected continuation yesterday. The Nizhniy Novgorod News Agency reported that Ruslan Kutayev, the organizer of the sensational nomination, worked at one time as an aide to Aslan Maskhadov, president of the Chechen Republic. Ruslan Kutayev himself does not deny this and claims that he left the Chechen Presidential Staff immediately after bandits and swindlers began to infiltrate it.

Akhmed Zakayev was born in 1959 in Kazakhstan, and graduated from the choreographic department of Groznyy Cultural Education School and the Voronezh State Institute of the Arts. In 1981-1990 he was an actor at the Groznyy Drama Theater Named After Khanpashi Nuradilov.

Just six weeks ago, Chechen rebels took 700 people hostage in a daring terror attack on a Moscow theatre that would end with 128 hostages dead, many as a result of the Russian rescue effort.

Novaya gazeta recently published two important documents concerning the 1999 explosions in Russian apartment buildings. The emergence of the documents — a letter from Yusuf Krymshamkhalov and Timur Batchaev, who are suspects in the case, and transcripts of interviews with GRU agent Aleksei Galkin ‹ suggests that the public commission formed last summer to investigate these crimes is making progress, and that Russia’s liberal circles refuse to give up the quest to establish the truth about the bombings. (An archive of articles and documents can be found on the Somnenie (Doubt) web page: www.somnenie.narod.ru/sent.html)

Elena Bonner, former wife of Andrei Sakharov, now chairs the Andrei Sakharov Foundation and devotes her time to human rights groups in Russia.