Word: putin
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...Putin's Plan B may work, at least as far as Russian public opinion is concerned. Most Russians prefer not to think about the war, and hostility toward Chechens and other people of the Caucasus is endemic. Plus, Putin has been relentless in enforcing a media blackout. The war appears on TV only when there is an incident too large to ignore--like the Chechen suicide bombing in the neighboring republic of Northern Ossetia in August that killed 50 people and destroyed a military hospital--or when ministers boast that the rebels are on their last legs. Russian media owners...
There's a neat symmetry to Putin's Chechenization scheme. The Chechen war, waged in 1994 by Putin's predecessor Boris Yeltsin, was supposed to be a brief punitive action against a small, unruly republic. But it ended in August 1996 with at least 80,000 Chechens dead, Russia humiliated and Chechnya independent in all but name. The experience was as scarring for Russia as Vietnam was for the U.S. In late 1999, after a series of apartment-block bombings in Moscow that the Kremlin blamed on Chechen terrorists, Putin, then Prime Minister, ordered the reinvasion of Chechnya, making...
...with a Russian victory no closer today than it was three years ago, Putin desperately needs a credible Plan B. As many as seven Russian soldiers are being killed every day in Chechnya, according to close observers of the war. Moscow rarely publishes its losses, but last February the Kremlin admitted to almost 4,600 soldiers dead since late 1999--more than it lost in the first Chechen war but still considered a gross understatement. Musa Doshukayev, the Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian-appointed administration in Chechnya, told TIME that the official Kremlin count "causes only mirth among security...
Various peace plans have been suggested for turning things around in Chechnya. One of the most detailed, put forward by Khasbulatov, speaks of giving Chechnya autonomy "under international supervision" within the Russian Federation. But Putin is opposed to anything that weakens Moscow's writ. And many Chechens believe with equal force that their only hope is independence...
...Gulag Archipelago that of all the people in the Soviet camps and in exile, the Chechens were from the "one nation which would not give in, would not acquire the mental habits of submission." The Chechens have lived up to that description. Unlike President Bush with Iraq, Putin can make sure Russians are not reminded of the Chechnya quagmire on a daily basis on TV. But silence is no solution. "I am here because it's the only job I know how to do," says Mikhail, a noncommissioned officer with the militarized forces of Russia's Interior Ministry...