Word: putin
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...horrifying carnage that ended the hostage crisis at a school in Beslan, in southern Russia, was a gruesome reminder of the abject failure of President Vladimir Putin's own "war on terror." At least 320 people are reported to have been killed Friday after Russian troops stormed a school to free more than 1,000 civilians, mostly women and children, held captive by a group of masked Chechen gunmen demanding that the authorities free their jailed comrades. As Russians reeled from the impact of a savage terror assault on children, President Putin on Saturday visited the scene and promised...
...bloodbath at Beslan came scarcely a week after twin suicide-bombings brought down two Russian airliners and a third wrought havoc outside a Moscow subway station, leaving more than 100 dead. The latest wave of attacks appeared calculated to mock President Putin's claim that he had defeated the Chechen separatist insurgency, and that the situation in the rebel region had was returning to normal following the election of Moscow's handpicked candidate as president of the region, in a poll widely criticized by observers. Indeed, the election was necessitated by the fact that Moscow's previous pick to lead...
...signs of terrorism," the chief spokesman of the Federal Security Service (FSB), Sergei Ignatchenko, insisted last Wednesday. Transport Minister Igor Levitin dismissed the idea that the tragedies might be linked. "They belong to different air companies, and were flying to different locations," he told journalists. Meanwhile, President Vladimir Putin appeared on state TV, discussing the harvest and the new school year. By Friday, the official line was unraveling. The FSB soon confirmed what Russian security experts had suspected from the start - a powerful explosive, hexogen, had been found in the wreckage of both planes. As little...
...impossible to pay; and, last week, a Moscow court's rejection of Yukos' bid to suspend the government's efforts to collect the first $3.4 billion. "We can't survive," Yukos CFO Bruce Misamore told the Financial Times. But the motives behind all this have remained murky. President Vladimir Putin insists that "the government should not cause Yukos' collapse," and says prosecutors "are acting...
...properly as long as they stay within the law." Others see a campaign to strip Khodorkovsky of political influence, roll back the power and wealth of the Russian oligarchs, and perhaps even renationalize Russia's oil industry. The clearest indication of motive may have come last month, when Putin's aide-de-camp and deputy chief of staff, Igor Sechin, was named chairman of the board of directors of the state-owned oil company, Rosneft. Sechin, 43, has no known experience in the oil business. Rosneft would not comment on the appointment. But the company is poised to snap...