Furthermore, there is still the problem of the Avar-settled former Chechen villages.

Shali, like many Chechen villages recently, faced the choice of telling the rebels to leave or facing a possible attack by Russian troops.

Local men armed with Kalashnikov rifles moved quietly through the woods on the edge of this Chechen village today.

A largely uneducated carpenter from a Chechen village, he often seems unsure of himself, and sometimes looks to the judge for guidance.

This grim Chechen village looks pretty much like the others strung across the eastern plains here.

They had been found in a pipe from a burned-out house in a Chechen village.

Some Chechen villages, such as Bavloi, specialized in tower building.

A local policeman was shot dead in the Chechen village of Kargalinskaya.

It was founded on the place where a small Chechen village previously stood.

They are then held in a Chechen village, as with Tolstoy's story, to be ransomed or killed.