Word: russian
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...military headquarters to cause maximum humiliation. In the case of Shali, the guerrillas had even announced they were coming back. Before abandoning the town last December, recalls Isa Madayev, chief of administration in a small town next door, the rebels warned they would return if there were any Russian abuses. Early last week, more than 50 young Chechen men were summarily rounded up in the town, said Madayev. "So no one was surprised when the fighters came back...
Putin knows that the one thing that can kill public support for the war is body bags; they destroy his promise of a low-casualty victory. Though neither side is telling the truth, Russian casualties are plainly mounting fast and becoming harder to hide. Late last week the military admitted that 742 soldiers have died since Caucasus military operations began last August. Two weeks ago they acknowledged 465 dead. Even by those highly suspect statistics, Russia has suffered almost 190 deaths in the past two weeks. In fact, the total war tally is almost double the official figures, a source...
...response, Russian generals lashed out as their Chechen adversaries hoped. From now on, Moscow announced, no Chechen male between the ages of 10 and 60 would be considered a refugee. They would be subjected to checks, and those suspected of "terrorism" would undergo further verification in detention centers. In the last war, these "filtration centers" were notorious as places of torture and death. This measure outraged the West, and Moscow quickly backed down. Now only males from 15 on will be subject to checks...
...pain on the battlefield was preceded by confusion in the corridors of power. Two days before the attacks, the Russian government declared a cease-fire for reasons it could not quite explain. Then the Kremlin announced that two top, hard-line field commanders in Chechnya were being replaced. Then they said the generals, Gennadi Troshev and Vladimir Shamanov, were not being replaced, just rotated back to their previous posts...
Military sources say the two generals had been removed for objecting to the cease-fire. A Russian observer of the military told TIME that Shamanov, known for an abrasive tongue, was particularly vehement: he reportedly declared that "no lieutenant colonel will ever stop me in Chechnya." Former kgb Lieut. Colonel Putin's response was swift: he removed him. But faced with an uproar in top military circles, he backed down--halfway...