Chechnya is awash in weapons. The Russian government says that is because the breakaway province is receiving foreign military aid. But Yuri Golotyuk, an expert on military affairs for the Moscow-based newspaper Izvestia, writes that much of Chechnya's weaponry comes from Russia. Golotyuk says there is no evidence of foreign military aid. Quoting sources in the Russian special services, Golotyuk says many Russian-made weapons may have been acquired by Chechnya legally under a 1997 agreement.
Oil is the main source of income for Chechnya.
Mikhail Delyagin, the head of a Moscow think tank who used to work for the presidential administration, has studied the economic aspects of the Chechen problem. He says Chechnya and the Russian regions that border it are economically interdependent, and their interdependence stems largely from Chechnya's trade in oil. The pipeline that carries oil from Azerbaijan's capital of Baku, on the Caspian Sea, to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiisk crosses through Chechnya. That means Chechen warlords can raise significant revenues by illegally siphoning off some oil. According to Delyagin, it is thanks to the modest but regular revenues from oil refineries that Chechnya actually survived the 1994-96 war.