Word: dagestan
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Russian commanders have, in fact, learned nothing at all since the first Chechnya war. Officers and NCOs who took part in battles last month against Chechen rebels in western Dagestan described their own commanders as corrupt, ill-organized and incompetent. Sources close to the Spetsnaz, the best-trained and most combat-experienced soldiers, say they lost officers to misdirected Russian "precision bombings" in Dagestan. They also speak of corrupt commanders who allowed Chechen leader Basayev to buy his way out of Dagestan after a failed offensive, and of helicopter-gunship crews who were bribed by the Chechens to hit empty...
...very convenient for troubled politicians. And so while the stated intention of Russia?s mini-invasion of Chechnya is to eliminate Islamic guerrillas involved in incursions into neighboring Dagestan, it will not hurt if a successful outcome burnishes the reputation of the recently installed prime minister Vladimir Putin. Or that a debacle may give Putin?s patron, President Boris Yeltsin, an excuse to postpone elections scheduled for next year...
...bombings, the renewed fighting in Chechnya and Dagestan, the mounting swirl of scandal, are all bringing the crisis to a boil," says Meier. "Something has to give. One of the world?s largest nuclear arsenals is now in the hands of a small coterie of aides terrified of losing their positions, surrounding and protecting a feeble old man whose power is steadily draining." Despite the frenzy of morbid clairvoyance sweeping the political elite, ordinary Russians remain depressed and indifferent. And that?s hardly surprising. A fourth bomb exploded in a St. Petersburg apartment building Thursday night, killing two people...
Authorities are blaming the blast on Chechen separatists dispatched from near the Dagestan border. In response, Moscow law enforcement agencies are carrying out a widespread search among the city?s Chechen population for signs of terrorist activity. They claim to be looking for a two-ton consignment of explosives transported to the capital in sugar bags, and have arrested more than 20 people on suspicion of involvement in terrorism. "But the bombing reveals a lot of what?s wrong in Russia today," says Meier. "The terrorists are suspected of using locally manufactured high-grade plastic explosives, which would imply that...
While Chechen Islamic separatists ? who are behind the fighting in Dagestan ? have certainly resorted to terror attacks inside Russia on many occasions in the past, many Russian politicians fear that President Boris Yeltsin may use them as a pretext to claim emergency powers and hang on to power. "Faced with a corruption scandal that won?t simply go away, that scenario may be tempting for Yeltsin," says Quinn-Judge. "But there?s no guarantee that he could actually pull it off and survive. There are even real questions over whether he could muster the support of the necessary security forces...