NEW YEAR’S “SPECIAL OPERATIONS” REPORTED.

Writing in the January issue 16 of the Los Angeles Times, journalist Maura Reynolds reported that Russia’s leading human rights organization, Memorial, has “documented the apparent killing of three men and the disappearance of six others during a Russian ‘special operation’ in Chechnya over the New Year’s holidays.” The chairman of Memorial, Oleg Orlov, in a letter sent to Vsevolod Chernov, the pro-Moscow chief prosecutor of Chechnya, which has now been made public, emphasized: “As interviews with local residents make clear, the special operation was carried out with the crudest violations of human rights and the law.” About eighty residents related that they had been “cruelly beaten” during their detentions, which took place between December 30 and January 3.