Word: russian
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...beginning of the 1990s, when the Soviet Union began to disintegrate, Grozny was one of the most livable places in the Caucasus. The climate was mild, the surrounding countryside spectacular, and fruit, grapes, wine and dairy products abundant. There was a cosmopolitan population of over half a million: Russians, Chechens, Armenians, Azeris, Jews and other peoples of the Caucasus. Now Grozny is more like a post-nuclear nightmare, a city systematically leveled by the Russian military campaign that propelled Vladimir Putin to the presidency a year ago, where gunfire and explosions are still so common that they blend into...
...resale, others sell the crude oil that bubbles up in many backyards - oil is one of the main prizes being fought over in this war. Many thousands depend on handouts from the few international agencies working in the city. Grozny's mayor, Beslan Gantemirov - amnestied in 1999 from a Russian prison where he was serving six years for embezzling municipal reconstruction funds after the last Chechen war in the mid-'90s - is highly visible. Thanks to his fast cars and retinue of heavies with nicknames like King Kong, he can hardly be missed. But local people say he does little...
...that the Chechens are rallying to its side, and that the situation in Grozny is almost normal. Many Western critics of Russia's operations in Chechnya, Putin said during an Internet conference earlier this month, just do not understand what is happening. "We feel that the actions of the Russian army are aimed at liberating the Chechen people from the terrorists who seized power and who compromise Islam and the Chechen people," Putin said reassuringly. He may well believe that. Yet as a visit to Grozny makes evident, the Russians are not only failing to win new friends...
...city's Teachers Training Institute, for example, pro-rector Makhmud Kerimov says attendance is down. Until December it was around 80%. Then one morning, apparently in retaliation for an attack on a Russian armored personnel carrier 2 km away, Russian forces opened fire on the college. On and off for two and half hours they strafed the building - targeting kids who tried to make a break for safety, Kerimov says, and killing five outstanding students. An investigation was opened, which then lapsed. Now he and his colleagues no longer feel they can urge students to come to class. Without pausing...
...near unanimity in condemning the use of force by ethnic Albanians in Macedonia. "This situation in Macedonia could spell strike three for the Albanians altogether," says Baton Haxhiu, editor of Kosovo's leading daily Koha Ditore. "Our reputation is being ruined. Our Western friends are turning into enemies." Russian President Vladimir Putin, in Stockholm to meet with leaders of the 15 E.U. countries, said - with an eye to his own problems in Chechnya - "these aren't rebels, but terrorists...