Word: dudayev
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...elusive rebel in crisp combat fatigues drives into an open field under a starry Chechen sky to speak on his satellite phone. As he talks, an unseen Russian plane far above is hunting him. It locks in on his satellite signal, launches its missiles and blasts the field. Jokhar Dudayev, the flamboyant and impassioned leader of Chechnya's rebellion against Russia, is dead...
...course, it might not really have happened that way. This was the version put out on Russian television, but Dudayev has used his satellite phone often, and one mystery of the war has been that the Russians have never tracked its signal to target him. There was no explanation of how they suddenly managed it. The Russian army commander in the region, General Vyacheslav Tikhomirov, gave a completely different explanation. After first denying that there had been any fighting, he then claimed his forces did fire shells at the Chechens in self-defense, and that one of these must have...
However it happened, though, Dudayev is gone. Yeltsin has said publicly that his re-election could depend on the outcome of the Chechen war; and in the short term, the elimination of the charismatic rebel, who had turned himself into a personal nemesis for Yeltsin, may look like a success and give the President a boost. In the longer run, the abrupt end of Dudayev's one-man leadership could result in splits and instability among the Chechen rebel commanders and make a settlement even harder to reach. Still, Yeltsin will no doubt be glad Dudayev is finished. The dapper...
...With or without Dudayev," Yeltsin said last week, "we shall wind up everything in Chechnya with peace." That still seems a far-off objective. Yeltsin's March 31 announcement of a cease-fire and an attempt at new negotiations brought no apparent slowdown in the fighting. Nevertheless, early last week with visiting President Bill Clinton at his side, Yeltsin insisted that "military actions are not going on" in Chechnya. Was he lying or out of touch with reality...
Yeltsin had called for contacts, through middlemen, with Dudayev. Even though the Chechen chief is dead and the fighting continues, such feelers with rebel leaders are still possible. But for the moment the outlook is not good. Dudayev's successor seems to be his vice president, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, who has a reputation as an ideologue and a believer in war to the end. Russian human-rights advocate Sergei Kovalyov, who has spent months in Chechnya, calls the new chief "a fanatic...