Word: chechen
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Responding to widespread criticism over the number of civilian casualties in his offensive against Chechnya, Russian President Boris Yeltsin today ordered an end to the air strikes responsible for many of the deaths and the virtual destruction of Grozny, the Chechen capital. While he said the door was open to peace talks, Yeltsin also insisted that Chechnya had no right to secede from Russia and his air power would continue to bombard military targets in the republic. "Russian soldiers are defending the integrity of Russia," Yeltsin said in his speech. "The regime in Grozny is illegitimate. It violates the fundamental...
...Wednesday, Dec. 14, Chechen president Jokhar Dudayev had broken off negotiations with a Russian team and summoned his people to "a war for life or death." But on Friday he proclaimed a cease-fire and announced that he would reopen talks. The stated positions of the two sides would seem to leave nothing to talk about. Dudayev was demanding that Russia immediately pull out its forces and recognize the full independence he had proclaimed for Chechnya three years ago, while Yeltsin insisted as a precondition for any withdrawal that the Chechens disarm and end their secession. The view in Moscow...
...forces could probably storm and occupy Grozny, a city of 400,000, within hours. But that would begin rather than end the war. Dudayev has called on his ! people to "strike and withdraw, strike and withdraw" until the invaders flee in "fear and terror." That was the strategy Chechen forebears followed in fighting czarist armies. They lost, but it took the Russians 47 years between 1817 and 1864 to subdue them...
...light frost on fertile fields and groves lining the highway to Grozny 18 miles away. But Russian soldiers in a column of 50 light tanks, armored personnel carriers and trucks could not enjoy the idyllic scene; they had to stop and take shelter behind their vehicles from unseen Chechen snipers. In a lovely grove left of the highway, a Grad missile launcher fired its projectiles toward the Chechen village of Achkoi-Martan four miles ahead; heavy artillery boomed and fires blazed atop hills. Journalists could not follow the battle any further because a light Russian tank suddenly opened fire...
...divisive war. Yeltsin and his onetime democratic allies are already increasingly isolated and on the defensive against the tacit "red-brown" alliance of communists and ultranationalists. If democratic forces now become wholly estranged from the President, the odds increase that military factions disgruntled with Yeltsin's handling of the Chechen crisis might stage a long- predicted military coup, neatly disguised as a necessary crackdown to prosecute the war. But the army itself is also divided; some officers far higher in rank than Major Victor consider the invasion a piece of bloody foolishness...