Word: chechnya
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...GROZNY, CHECHNYA: A grenade explosion killed three antiwar prostestors and and injured seven when it exploded in a crowd of antiwar protestors camping in front of the bombed out presidential palace in Chechnya. The demonstrators are calling for the withdrawal of Russian troops and the end of the Chechen war, which has killed as many as 30,000 since fighting began last December. Yeltsin ruled out unconditional withdrawal, saying that a "total slaughter" would sweep Chechnya if the Russians left, which is surprising since Grozny was razed, and casualties mounted only after the Russian army invaded. Although Yeltsin realizes...
...Yeltsin's primary goal was to make certain the invading guerrillas did not get back to their base. That would have left him open to a repetition of the political blow he suffered when a similar gang raided the Russian town of Budyonnovsk last June and then vanished into Chechnya's mountains. Yeltsin has been ill, and his popularity rating is low. The political medicine he needs is an image of strong leadership, so he unleashed furious force on Pervomaiskoye. Last week's operation, says General Boris Gromov, who commanded Soviet forces in Afghanistan and is now a member...
...Dagestani hostages, and they have no sympathy for Chechen rebels. They may even have agreed with Yeltsin when he crowed that "mad dogs must be shot." But now Yeltsin and his hard-line Kremlin advisers are ready to cast aside the tentative peace agreement they worked out with breakaway Chechnya last summer...
Most Western diplomats and analysts believe a settlement that grants Chechnya some kind of special status within the Russian Federation is the only possible long-term solution. A counterinsurgency war would be expensive and bloody, and the Russian armed forces are obviously not up to the job. In any case, their commanders should have learned in Afghanistan that conventional armies do badly when pitted against highly motivated guerrillas. If Yeltsin chooses to fight, by election day in June he could be under political attack from both sides: hawkish rivals criticizing the unsuccessful conduct of the war and doves calling...
...Chechen rebels held more than 100 civilians hostage. Yeltsin claimed that 82 people were released in the sledgehammer operation, but the village was destroyed and some of the terrorists--reportedly including their leader, Salman Raduyev, related by marriage to Jokhar Dudayev, the chief rebel leader--escaped back into Chechnya...