Word: chechnya
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Putin is not linking this incident to the war in Chechnya (which he says is over); he's saying this hostage crisis was a product of international terrorism. He's trying to very hard hitch himself to the American bandwagon, saying this has proven, as Russians say, on their own skin, that Russia is a target of international terrorism, and that they'll fight it by any means necessary. And in doing so, Putin is making a terrible mistake...
...everyone in it as soon as they were inside, and then celebrated the fact that they killed 800 Russians. These Chechens actually had a series of demands - they were totally unrealistic, of course, and there was no way Putin was ever going to agree to withdraw his forces from Chechnya. Nor did they have any exit strategy. But they were still using terrorism as a means, however misguided and brutal, of exerting political pressure...
...attack is, however, a major embarrassment for Putin, because it undermines his claim - officially announced last April - that the war in Chechnya is over. By restricting media coverage, Kremlin claims of success in the breakaway republic have gone largely unchallenged at home, except by occasional dramatic events such as the killing of 119 Russian personnel when a military helicopter was shot down in August. But violence in Chechnya has been ongoing, with large numbers continuing to die on both sides. And the fact that a heavily armed group of this size was able to travel undetected from the Caucasus...
...Visitors to Chechnya over the past six months note a growing belief among young Chechens that theirs is a "doomed generation," fated to be killed by the Russians whether they take up arms or simply stay at home waiting to be taken away in a police security sweep. And that perception has fueled an inclination to go down fighting. Now, a sophisticated terror operation has brought Muscovites face to face with the ongoing war, undermining President Putin's claims of victory and forcing him to cancel his planned attendance at an Asia-Pacific summit where he was to have held...
...Russian leader is not wrong about links between the Chechen insurgency and al-Qaeda: Arab volunteers have long fought in Chechnya under a Saudi commander known simply as Khattab (killed in action earlier this year), who had fought in Afghanistan and was believed to have been close to Osama bin Laden. And a few score al-Qaeda operatives took refuge alongside Chechen fighters hiding in Georgia last winter. Even there, however, there were clear differences - the al-Qaeda operatives urging the Chechens to attack Western targets in Russia, while many local Chechen commanders showed little interest in global 'jihad,' seeing...