Word: dagestanis
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...wasn?t supposed to have much to do except cover Boris Yeltsin?s ample backside and make the usual feeble attempts at halting Russia?s economic dissolution. Suddenly he?s got a war to win, and it?s a war that Stepashin has lost before. In Dagestani, a provivce that borders on Chechnya in Russia?s mountainous (and mostly Muslim) north Caucasus region, a rebel force is trying to join its Chechen neighbors in achieving a de facto independence from Russia and becoming part of Chechnya. Russian forces have begun attacking the rebels ? pooh-poohed by the official Russain news...
Russians for the most part received news of these events through the filters of official spokesmen and public television. They wanted to believe the operation went well, they had no special affinity for the 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...
MOSCOW: Chechen Rebels today released 45 Dagestani hostages taken during the January 9th attack on the village of Kizlyar. The Chechens may still hold as many as 24 Russian policemen captured during the raid in addition to 30 Russian power plant workers who were seized in Grozny last week. Unintimidated by Russian threats to "unconditionally eliminate" Chechen leader Jokar Dudayev, the rebels are holding the remainder of the hostages, demanding that the Russian government release the bodies of fighters killed during the assault. Chechen morale has risen dramatically since the strike into Dagestan, despite Yeltsin's tough talk...
...although Yeltsin's government has won this battle, the demolition of Pervomayskaya may still spark a larger conflict. TIME's Yuri Zarakhovich reports that many in the autonomous republic of Dagestan are seething over what they see as the Russian government's willingness to risk the lives of Dagestani hostages to destroy the invading rebels. "Not unlike neighboring Chechnya, there are caches of weapons in every house here, and all the people are as volatile. Enmity towards Moscow is visibly growing. If Dagestan should ever rise against Moscow and traditional ethnic rivalries flare up with a renewed force, the ongoing...
PERVOMAYSKAYA, DAGESTAN: In a tiny Dagestani village in a Russian republic that abuts Chechnya, officials have so far failed to negotiate the release of the more than 100 hostages held as human shields by Chechen rebels seeking safe passage home after their raid on the town of Kizlar. "A convoy of 11 buses, packed with hungry, exhausted women and children, and two trucks filled up with corpses, sits in the lazily falling snow on the frozen mud road," reports TIME's Yuri Zarakhovich. "Some 250 Chechen rebels, their guns and bazookas at ready and their fingers itchy on triggers, have...