Chechnya Peace Forum

01-07-2010 | Chechnya Peace Forum at the Council of Europe

Historic recognition of the situation in the Northern Caucasus by the Council of EuropeDick Marty is a Swiss senator and a member of the Council of Europe. He is rapporteur for the Northern Caucasus t (...)

04-06-2010 | Council of Europe recognises Chechnya as top concern

Any campaign that seeks to turn around as tragic and painful a situation as that of Chechnya can only consist of many very small steps. One such small step was made this week when the true state of th (...)

18-12-2009 | Little progress since First Chechen War

For centuries, the Chechen nation has been under the cosh of Russian imperialistic domination. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Chechen people were hoping for self-rule and democratic autonomy, (...)

11-12-2009 | Kotovskaya - pushed not jumped

When Olga Kotovskaya fell to her death from the 14th floor of a tower block on November 16th, officials claimed it was suicide and the state-controlled media made no mention of her death. Thanks to th (...)

02-12-2009 | Nevsky Express bombing damages the cause for peace

The Chechnya Peace Forum strongly condemns this heinous crime and we are deeply saddened by the loss of innocent life. KavKazCenter, the Islamist extremist website has today published a letter, signed (...)

26-11-2009 | Sergei Magnitsky's tragedy is all-too familiar

Last week, Sergei Magnitsky, a young (he was 37 years old), honest and hard working lawyer, who had courageously and outspokenly exposed widespread corruption and fraud among Russia's police forc (...)

19-11-2009 | Alexander Litvinenko 1962 - 2006

My friend Alexander (Sasha) Litvinenko saw during the nineties how the KGB and its successor the FSB descended into corruption, organized crime and the liquidation of opponents. Sasha was a whistle bl (...)

13-11-2009 | Medvedev speech under Putin's shadow

The person who will be most pleased with President Dmitry Medvedev's state of the nation speech on Thursday is the man who may well be giving it himself in three years time, Prime Minister Vladim (...)

09-11-2009 | The Fall Of The Wall

In the early days of November in 1989 the spirit of freedom was spreading like an unstoppable bushfire over Eastern Europe. The iron curtain was cracking under the pressure and the hardline regime of (...)

05-11-2009 | Miliband's Moscow visit should not ignore humanitarian concerns

This week is the first time in five years that a British foreign secretary has made an official visit to Russia. David Miliband's trip was referred to by some commentators as a "chance to bu (...)

29-10-2009 | EU gives Sakharov prize to human rights defenders in Russia

Last week the European Parliament awarded its prestigious Andrej Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought to the Russian civil rights defence organization Memorial and their three representatives Oleg Or (...)

22-10-2009 | Remembering Dubrovka

Seven years ago on 23 October 2002, between forty and fifty terrorists stormed the Dubrovka theatre in Moscow with weapons and explosives and took some 900 people, cast and audience, hostage in the mi (...)

16-10-2009 | Another farcical election

Last Sunday there were local and regional elections in Russia. Back in August Medvedev said that: "new democratic times are beginning". The elections were seen as a litmus test for the presi (...)

07-10-2009 | Anna Politkovskaya 1958 – 2006.

Precisely three years ago, on 7th October 2006, a woman in Moscow came home after shopping and was about to take the lift up to her flat in the centre of Moscow. With her into the lift came an assassi (...)

02-10-2009 | Russia's arrogance over human rights abuses cannot continue

This week the New York based, world renowned human rights organisation, Human Rights Watch, released a damning report on Russia's human rights record in Chechnya. "Who will tell me what h (...)

24-09-2009 | Scrapping the BMD defence shield – bargaining for what?

On 17 September the United States announced it would scrap its plans for a Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) shield in Europe, controversially launched two years ago as an interceptive system against nu (...)

17-09-2009 | Putin's power challenged by Medvedev

The developing spat between Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev is a sad reminder of Putin's transparent hunger for power. Putin hinted last Friday that he may run for President again in (...)

14-09-2009 | The Russian terror bombings of September 1999

Last Friday was exactly eight years after the heinous Al Qaeda terror attacks in the United States and I wish to draw your attention to similar terror bombings in Russia two years earlier, in Septembe (...)

03-09-2009 | Five years after Beslan

Five years after the tragedy of the Beslan school massacre in Russia's North Ossetian province was supposed to have signaled a ‘turning point' in Russia's relationship with terror (...)

27-08-2009 | UNfit for purpose

The United Nations, our first global peace organization, does not function.In times of world crisis it is either absent, silent, irrelevant or insufficient in its reactions.Where was a forceful interv (...)

20-08-2009 | Suppression has led to radicalisation

The bomb blast that ripped through Ingushetia, Chechnya's smaller Western neighbour, on Monday, was one of the deadliest attacks that have taken place in the region in recent years, killing twent (...)

13-08-2009 | World Chechen Congress announced

Following the groundbreaking talks that took place in Oslo last month, I have had the pleasure of mediating a further round of consultations between Dukhvakha Abdurakhmanov, representative of the Russ (...)

06-08-2009 | Ten years of Putin in power

Saturday will mark ten years of Vladimir Putin's reign in Russia. These ten years do not encompass a conventional stay of power, Putin being neither officially elected or sworn in on August 9th 1 (...)

23-07-2009 | Estemirova's murder signals time for change

The tragic and shocking assassination of Natalia Estemirova last week has momentarily stalled the West's growing complacency over Russia's continuing legacy of authoritarianism and violence (...)

17-07-2009 | Voting in Russia

The Kremlin have their own name for Russian democracy, they call it: "Sovereign Democracy." However It is more about absolute sovereignty than any notion of democracy.In the past 10 years th (...)

09-07-2009 \| Obama On The World Stage – From Moscow to the G8

After the fanfare of President Obama's first state visit to Russia has died down, analysts will be left examining what exactly was achieved over the past two days. Obama arrived in Moscow d (...)

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02-07-2009 | Obama's visit to Russia

There has been talk of little else in the weeks leading up to what the Financial Times has called Russia's "media event of the year": next week's meeting in Moscow between Barack O (...)

25-06-2009 | Telenor telecoms and Russia - A Dodgy Affair

Telenor, Norwegian telecoms giant is in dispute with Alfa, one of Russia's largest financial groups, over the highly lucrative mobile telephone business in Russia and Ukraine. The Norwegian state (...)

11-06-2009 | Russia in financial crisis

It is almost ten years since Putin captured power in Russia, a period in which he both duped the Russian people into acquiescence and then bought their support. But there are signs that the myth of ec (...)

05-06-2009 | Russia a year on: testing Medvedev's credentials

On Wednesday 2nd June the Henry Jackson Society and the Chechnya Peace Forum hosted a seminar on "Russia A Year On: Testing Medvedev's Democratic Credentials." By kind invitation of Lab (...)

01-06-2009 | In tribute to Olga Konskaya

Chechnya Peace Forum is deeply saddened to receive the announcement of the passing of the Russian film producer Olga Konskaya. With her husband Andrei Nekrasov she has produced invaluable films of Rus (...)

28-05-2009 \| Threats will not stop dissent against the Kremlin

News is leaking out of an alleged plot by the Russian secret service, the FSB, to assassinate my friend Akhmed Zakayev. While not formally involved with the work of the Chechnya Peace Forum, Akhmed� (...)

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21-05-2009 | Defending freedom through debate

This week a large peace conference was held in Oslo. The initiator was the US based Human Rights Foundation headed by Thor Halvorssen, a young American film director of Norwegian and Venezuelan descen (...)

14-05-2009 | Quo Vadis Ukraine?

When Victor Yushchenko's Orange revolution overturned the Moscow orchestrated fraudulent election in Ukraine there was real hope for democracy and the beginnings of a new dawn. Sadly five years o (...)

07-05-2009 | Putin's Mini Me

It is exactly a year since Dmitry Medvedev officially took over as Russian President. Under a faint façade of democratic legitimacy Medvedev was ushered into the Kremlin under the watchful eye (...)

30-04-2009 | Elections – Russian style

Last Sunday, 26 April, the Sochi Mayoral election took place in the Southern Russian city of by the Black Sea, and the location of the Winter Olympics in 2014. Unsurprisingly, Anatoly Pakhomov, the ca (...)

24-04-2009 | Welcome to Chechnya Peace Forum

Today our Daily News Bulletin will be received by well over a thousand new readers among whom are members of the European Parliament, Council of Europe and European national parliaments. I welcome you (...)

16-04-2009 | Winter Olympics in Sochi

July 4th 2007 was a great day for President Vladimir Putin. Years of intense lobbying with the International Olympic Committee had been worth it: the attractive seaside resort Sochi by the Black Sea w (...)

08-04-2009 | The Cruelty of War

As a human rights defender I have so often been desperately frustrated about the deafening silence and absent intervention of the so-called "International Community" concerning war crimes. D (...)

02-04-2009 | New signals for Chechnya from Medvedev?

Russian president Dmitiri Medvedev on 27th March proposed putting together a national anti-terror committee to consider "officially" ending Russia's war in Chechnya. "I (...)

01-04-2009 | Violent attack on leading human rights activist

Reports of the violent attack on leading Russian human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov, which has left him in a very serious condition after being jumped upon by unknown assailants and kicked, is yet a (...)

26-03-2009 | European Parliament Hearing on Chechnya

On 18th March the EPP and EP party groups (Christian Democrats and European Democrats) of the European Parliament arranged a Hearing on Chechnya in the premises of the Parliamentary buildings in Bruss (...)

12-03-2009 | Lost in translation

When US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the NATO meeting in Geneva last week, she presented him with a little red "reset button" a (...)

20-01-2009 | The price of opposition

Dear Friends, The recent killing of Umar Israilov, a Chechen who was granted asylum in Vienna will be seen by many as yet another example of the lengths that the Kremlin-imposed Chechen Pr (...)

18-12-2008 | Kremlin treason bill: yet another attack on political freedoms

Dear Friends, This morning I read that the Kremlin has submitted a bill to the Duma which seeks to widen the legal parameters of treason to strengthen its ability to prosecute those (...)

10-12-2008 | Human rights day

Dear Friends, Today is the 60th anniversary of the signing of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Inspired by the colossal loss of life, suffering and bar (...)

04-12-2008 | Cross-fire in the Caucasus

Dear Friends, Last week the Chechnya Peace Forum joined forces with the Henry Jackson Society, hosting a seminar in London entitled: Cross-fire in the Caucasus - Russia's threat (...)

24-11-2008 | Justice for Anna and Sasha

Dear Friends, The trial of the men charged with involvement in the murder of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya again grabbed the headlines recently when the trial finally opene (...)

13-11-2008 | Missiles, autocracy and broken promises

Dear Friends, Like most of the world. I was gripped by the US presidential elections last week. While world leaders rushed to congratulate the Barack Obama on his victory, the Russian Pres (...)

16-09-2008 | CPF website relaunch!

Dear Friends, I am very happy to be writing to you today as we re-launch the Chechnya Peace Forum website. We have been working hard on it over the last few months and have developed (...)

01-09-2008 | The tragic murder of Magomed Yevloev

Dear Friends, I would like to take this opportunity to extend my deepest condolences to the family of Magomed Yevloev, who was killed in Ingushetia yesterday. Magomed's work as (...)

26-08-2008 | The problems of the Caucasus do not stop at Georgia's de facto borders

Dear Friends, Like many others, I have been gripped by events in Georgia over the last couple of weeks, and I would like to take this opportunity to put across some of my views (...)

10-07-2008 | A warm welcome and some ideas on future CPF initiatives

Dear friends, Welcome to my blog! I hope to use it to keep friends of the Chechnya Peace Forum informed of our progress and on the state of affairs in Chechnya, so please revisit it to keep (...)