Word: paratroops
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...have produced numerous false starts towards peace, the job of actually negotiating Russia's way out of an increasingly thorny situation is not an easy one. The latest to try his hand: Newly named Russian special envoy to Chechnya Alexander Lebed. After returning from Chechnya on Monday, the former-paratroop general condemned the Russian army's conduct of the war and announced he had a concrete plan to end the fighting, if the government would only concentrate enough power in his hands. Lebed wants control of all army units in the Chechnya, and the authority to appoint federal officials...
Actions as well as words have earned him admiration. During the hard-liners' attempted coup of 1991, for example, he led a paratroop squad that protected Yeltsin's headquarters, the White House. Tiraspol is the capital of Trans-Dniestr, a region of Moldova, one of the former Soviet republics. The inhabitants of Trans-Dniestr are largely Russian and Ukrainian, and for several years they have sought independence from Moldova. Lebed was sent to the region in 1992 to take command of the Fourteenth Army, and he intervened in the conflict between Moldovans and the Russian-speaking population. He has remained...
...began almost on the same day in December as the conflict in Afghanistan had begun 15 years earlier. But that is all the two campaigns have in common. In Afghanistan a small group of special forces from the kgb and the gru, the military intelligence service, assisted by several paratroop battalions, managed to take Kabul, the capital, in one day with minimal losses. In the Chechnya war, our commanders seemed to be totally oblivious of this lesson when they went after Chechen leader Jokhar Dudayev. They should have used elite troops; instead, they went in with raw recruits. In Afghanistan...
...videos show the prevailing culture of the Airborne was one that tolerated, and perhaps encouraged, racism and sadism,'' the Montreal Gazette said in an editorial last week. The daily urged the government to investigate the unit. ``The elite paratroop regiment looks out of control,'' declared the Toronto Star. ``We need answers,'' said Rubin Friedman, an executive of B'nai Brith in Ottawa. ``The issue goes beyond individual acts of racism and brutality and shows systematic dehumanization...
...Grachev appeared before the Russian parliament two weeks ago, everyone expected that his visit would be the political equivalent of a burning at the stake. His numerous critics were eager to toss a branch onto the fire that seemed about to consume the career of the 46-year- old paratroop veteran of the Afghan War who was promoted to Defense Minister three years ago. As the general who oversaw the final withdrawal of his country's army from eastern Germany last August -- an exercise most Russian soldiers still find humiliating -- Grachev has become the embodiment of every ailment besetting...