Despite all the Kremlin’s claims to the contrary, the ex-President of Chechnya and rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov is not hiding in the most inaccessible areas of the mountainous Nozhai-Yurtovsky district of Chechnya.

As revealed in the interview with Maskhadov published in this week’s edition of ‘Novaya Gazeta’, he moves around the Chechen Republic, including the areas where there is a prominent federal presence. Regardless of the Press Ministry’s prior warnings, the weekly Novaya Gazeta has published another interview with Aslan Maskhadov. The journalist who conducted the interview was Anna Politkovskaya, who herself was arrested by the military in Chechnya near the village of Hatuni at the beginning of the year and who first revealed the existence of pits in which locals were allegedly held captive. And now Politovskaya has sprung another unpleasant surprise on the military, for which she is undoubtedly putting herself at risk. In the interview Maskhaddov denies that he played any part in the murder of Adam Deniev, a politician and leader of the mystical movement ‘Adamallah - Chelovechnost’, who was blown up while making a live radio broadcast on April 13th this year. In the same interview Maskhadov, who was voted president of Ichkeria (Chechnya) after the end of the first Chechen war in 1996 when the republic gained virtual though unrecognised independence, again calls upon Moscow to enter into talks with him. However, he himself admits that at present talks are unforeseeable: “Today there is not a single official in the Kremlin with whom it is possible to talk soberly and reasonably even about Russia’s interests, and what is most advantageous for Russia. You understand there is nobody to hold talks with! Basically the separatist and the journalist come to the conclusion that the Russian leadership has long been waiting for, i.e. that it would be best for Maskhadov to make his way to his son in Malaysia.