Word: putin
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Beslan in North Ossetia. On the third day of the attack, at least 330 people were killed, more than half of them children. The attack was said to have altered the whole arc of not only the horrific conflict in nearby Chechnya but also the presidency of Vladimir Putin. Beslan was supposed to have given Moscow resolve. North Ossetia - indeed, the whole of the North Caucasus, between the Black Sea to the west and the Caspian Sea to the east - was supposed to be tranquil, harmonious, subdued. But that's not what has happened...
...Russians invaded Chechnya in 1994 to try to keep it part of Russia. They failed. In 1999, three years after the end of the first Chechen war, they went back, at the prodding of then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. In a move reminiscent of Tolstoy's hundred-year-old Hadji Murad - which was also set in a strife-ridden Caucasus - the chief separatist, Akhmad Kadyrov, like the title character in the prescient short novel, switched sides at the beginning of the second Chechen war and crushed the rebellion. Assassinated in May 2004, Kadyrov was replaced by his son. (From TIME...
Other compounding factors include high unemployment - in Ingushetia, the worst off, unemployment has hit 70% - and a Kremlin that has placed too much faith in client-states to keep the peace. Exhibit A: Ramzan Kadyrov. Kadyrov was hailed as a success by Putin, who has painted himself as a strongman who brought peace and prosperity to Russia. But Kadyrov is a thug whose militia are guilty of every human-rights abuse imaginable; when the Russians ended their 10-year counterterrorism operations in the region earlier this year, violence surged...
...While Washington insists that it will not recognize a Russian "sphere of influence," the moves by Medvedev and Putin place a question mark over the Obama Administration's ability to check Russia's determination to forcefully push what it calls its "privileged interests" in its neighboring countries. The flurry of diplomatic activity came symbolically on the anniversary of last summer's Russia-Georgia war, in which Moscow intervened on behalf of the breakaway Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. (See pictures of the war in Georgia...
...breakaway Georgian territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia are proving more pliable. With Nicaragua the only country other than Russia to recognize their independence, they are reliant on support from Moscow, which has been happy to oblige. The day after Medvedev's letter was made public, Prime Minister Putin visited Abkhazia, pledging around $500 million in military aid. Georgia reacted angrily, calling the visit "a provocation carried out quite in the tradition of Soviet special services," a reference to Putin's KGB past. (See pictures of Vladimir Putin: Action Figure...