Word: russianness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...destination is Gudermes, Chechnya's second-largest city, which recently surrendered to Russian troops without a shot. Now, as Russian guns, warplanes and missiles reduce to rubble what was left of Gudermes after the 1994-96 war, Russian officials talk increasingly of turning this grim railway town with a peacetime population of 38,000 into Chechnya's new capital. No problem, says a Russian airborne general, as we stand in a forward base just outside Gudermes listening to the steady rumble of heavy artillery and long salvos of Grad missiles. "We could establish the capital on this hill...
This is a war fought with bombers and artillery, though the dirty, killing work of real combat will probably increase as the Russian troops approach Grozny, the Chechen capital. Reports filtering out of the front lines are filled with talk of shortages of warm clothes, sleeping bags, gloves and socks for the troops, who will have to spend a bitterly cold winter in the open...
...fire. The city has no lights, no gas, no work. As our convoy drives up to the Gudermes administrative office with its fake Greek columns, we are met by a crowd of local citizens. We assume they have been bused in to voice their support and enthusiasm for the Russian presence. In fact, they have come to complain. Russian troops--in particular the special assignment police unit, a heavily militarized unit with a reputation for excessive muscle--have been looting the place. "They stole my car yesterday," yells one man in the crowd. "The soldiers steal cattle, spare parts. They...
...Russians seem intent on winning--for now--at any cost. In Moscow, top army commanders announced at week's end that Russian troops had entered the third and final phase of the offensive, the destruction of guerrillas in their mountain bases. On Thursday Grozny was hammered with the heaviest rocket and artillery fire of the current war. Thousands of rockets and shells rained down on the city, according to the Russian media. The few journalists in the city say hospitals are overflowing. The breakaway government claims more than 4,000 have died, though this cannot be independently confirmed. But Chechen...
...military convoy heading out of town when the main event, much delayed, finally happens. Accompanied by multiple levels of security, Anatoli Chubais, former Deputy Prime Minister and Kremlin chief of staff and now head of the energy monopoly RAOEES, drives up to the administrative building. With him are the Russian government's point man for the breakaway republic, Nikolai Koshman, and the mufti of Chechnya, who has recently withdrawn his support from the government of Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov...