The NYT on what's going on in Chechnya:

Gay men have never had an easy life in Chechnya. But the targeted, collective punishment of gays that began last month under its pro-Kremlin leader, Ramzan A. Kadyrov, is a new turn in the region’s long history of rights abuses. Novaya Gazeta, an opposition newspaper, first reported the pogrom, saying that at least 100 gay men had been arrested and three killed in the roundup. Human Rights Watch corroborated those findings.... The men were held for as little as a day or as long as several weeks, according to Human Rights Watch and to interviews with gay men who later escaped the region. Some “returned to their families barely alive from beatings,” said Tanya Lokshina, Russia program director for Human Rights Watch. Among the fatalities documented by the organization were one man who succumbed during torture and two others who died in “honor killings” by relatives after the police released them.

Chechnya's leader—an appointee and puppet of Vladimir Putin's—has pledged to cleanse Chechnya of gay men by Ramadan while spokespersons for his government deny that there are any gay men in Chechnya at all:

In a telephone interview, Mr. Kadyrov’s spokesman, Alvi Karimov, said the reports of an anti-gay pogrom had to be false because such men did not exist in Chechnya. “In Grozny, have you ever noticed people who, by their appearance or manners, resemble people who are oriented in the wrong way?” Mr. Karimov asked. “A policy is developed for a problem,” he said, referring to a report that said the arrests were official policy. “I can officially say there is no policy because there is no problem. If there were a problem, there would be a policy.”

Chechnya is a Russian federal Republic, it's a part of Russia proper, the leader of Chechnya was appointed by Putin, he serves at Putin's pleasure, and nothing happens in Chechnya without Putin's approval. Putin is responsible. Thank you, Katie Couric, for pressing Putin's mouthpiece to address this issue.