Not so small any more.

The article focuses on the war in Chechnya. In the biggest attack outside Chechnya since the 1999 incursion into Dagestan, which provoked Russia's second war in Chechnya, over 200 men attacked targets in Ingushetia, among them the interior ministry in Nazran. The attacks came a few weeks after a bomb in Grozny had killed Chechnya's Kremlin-imposed president, Akhmad Kadyrov. Ingushetia is where many Chechens fled from the war. Last year, to support its claim that Chechnya was normalising, the government began closing the camps and sending refugees "home", often under threat of violence or prosecution. According to Human Rights Watch, human- rights abuses are increasingly spreading across the border of Chechnya, among them killings and kidnappings by Russian and Chechen security forces. This week Russia's parliament was due to approve a law giving operational control of the army to the defence minister, leaving the generals in charge of strategy. This could help President Vladimir Putin's attempts to reform the army, and might be a step towards reducing the corruption that helps keep the Chechnya conflict going.