Word: caucasus
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...where the highway robbery that has stripped the country of assets and enriched a handful of crony capitalists has been going on ever since "reform" arrived in 1991. An impoverished, disillusioned populace long ago lost its capacity for outrage. With bombs exploding around their country, looming war in the Caucasus and rumors of a political crisis to worry about, Russians have written off the money scandals as dirty business as usual. But in the U.S. the corruption seems to symbolize reform gone wrong, a wholesale failure of Russia to transform itself into a working free-market democracy...
...bomb the airport in the Chechen capital, Grozny, on Thursday, and massed some 13,000 troops on the rebellious state?s border. At the same time, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin claimed U.S. support for his efforts, alleging that terrorist financier Osama bin Laden is behind the unrest in the Caucasus and the recent spate of apartment bombings. "The U.S. has expressed support for Russia?s fight against domestic terrorism, but it may find itself in a tight spot if Moscow goes to war with Chechnya in the name of that fight," says TIME Moscow correspondent Andrew Meier...
Coming hard on the heels of last weekend?s car-bomb attack that killed scores of people in an apartment block used by Russian military personnel in Dagestan ? and the renewed offensive by Islamic separatists there ? the temptation to link the latest Moscow blast to the turbulence in the Caucasus is strong. But the blast also follows last week?s attack on a games arcade in a shopping mall near the Kremlin, which sparked speculation that a gangland turf battle was involved, or, conversely, that the attack was part of a pattern of provocation by unnamed forces in the corridors...
...lose Dagestan. Things are bad over there," ex-Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin said as he was surrendering his office last week. Bad they are: a new bout of fighting in Dagestan, a tiny Muslim republic of 2.1 million people and more than 30 ethnic groups in the Russian North Caucasus, is turning into a full-fledged war. In Moscow's political back rooms, there's fear it may evolve into something even more frightening: an excuse to cancel coming elections and clamp a state-of-emergency rule over Russia...
Oddly, that may be what Yeltsin wants. Wars in the North Caucasus remain in some eyes a credible excuse for imposing a state of emergency on Russia. Leaders of the Federation Council (the upper house of the Russian Parliament) indicated last week that they would be receptive to emergency measures--a plan that would allow Yeltsin to postpone elections and engineer a less than democratic transition. Hints of that fear were on display last week, as police tightened security around government buildings, airports and railway stations. Patrols clad in bulletproof vests showed up in the Moscow subway, and armor rolled...