Word: russian
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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...
...first light, Russian troops in combat gear move slowly along one of Grozny's ruined main streets, past makeshift crosses erected to their fallen comrades. Hugging the edge of the road to avoid snipers, they peer into the bushes, looking for radio-controlled mines and booby traps laid overnight by Chechen separatists. The soldiers--young conscripts fresh from the provinces and professionals here for the money--are tense, but they barely glance at most Chechens passing by. And the Chechens ignore them. The Russians don't find any mines this morning, and at a concrete-and-barbed-wire checkpoint, their...
This is gradual normalization, the phrase that Russian President Vladimir Putin's propaganda machine has come up with to describe what passes for life in Chechnya. When a mine blew up recently near the campus of Grozny University, a student looked at his watch and quipped, "Normalization is early today." Normalization is scheduled to enter a new phase this week, with the expected announcement of election results for the Chechen presidency. Chechens had little choice but to vote for Putin's hand-picked nominee, Akhmad Kadyrov, 52, head of the Moscow-appointed administration in Chechnya. The former mufti, or chief...
...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 the conflict a key theme of his presidential election campaign. By February 2000, Russian jets had crushed the resistance in Grozny by reducing the city to rubble. Putin's promise to bring the rebellious republic back into line got him elected President. He has no intention of letting the place unmake...
...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...