Russian troops, introduced into Chechnya on December 11 by decree of then-President Yeltsin, launched a large-scale offensive against the city of Grozny, accompanied by massive sky bombing and artillery shelling.

At 3 o'clock in the morning in the village of Gekhi, on Kirova Street, opposite secondary school No. 1, a powerful explosion occurred in the Ismailovs' yard. Neighbors who came running to the scene found two corpses in the yard.

The head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, held a meeting with the heads of the regional Ministry of Internal Affairs and the National Guard. He recalled that their relatives will also be held responsible for the actions of all “extremists and terrorists” operating from abroad.

From December 30, 2001 to January 3, 2002, a large-scale “cleanup” was carried out in the village of Tsotsin-Yurt. At dawn, several groups (units of the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, police officers, district military commandant’s office, special forces of the FSB and GRU) in accompanied by armored vehicles, entered the village.

The Malgobek City Court softened the preventive measure for Ingushetia resident Leila Gatagazheva. After six and a half years in pre-trial detention, she was placed under house arrest, the Memorial Human Rights Center reported.

The Makhachkala Garrison and Southern District Military Courts did not satisfy the claim of Nuradil Bagautdinov from Dagestan against the Russian Ministry of Defense. The plaintiff was unable to obtain compensation for moral damage in the amount of 3 million rubles.

In the city of Argun, Russian soldiers burst into the house of Sultan Yasuev’s family at night. They took the nephew of the owner of the house into the yard and shot him. The corpse was dressed in camouflage uniform and, filming it on a video camera, they made a comment that it was a killed militant.

The court rejected the appeal of the Crimean political prisoner Server Mustafayev against the decision in the claim against the pre-trial detention center-1 of Ryazan for violation of his rights. The Koran and medicines were taken away from him, and he was not allowed to speak the Crimean Tatar language during calls with his family. Lawyer Lilya Gemedzhi intends to file a cassation appeal.

The Delegation of the European Union to Georgia published a statement in connection with the decision of the Abkhaz authorities to transfer the state dacha in Pitsunda to Russia.

On November 29, a man discovered the body of a young man under a bridge on the eastern outskirts of the Chechen city of Kurchaloy. The deceased was a student of the Grozny State Petroleum Technical University Deni Aliev.