Word: russias
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Much of the suffering of this war has been caused by Russia's strategy. In the last war, poorly trained and demoralized conscripts were badly mauled by Chechen guerrillas. Now the Russians have decided to avoid direct fighting. Instead they are using military might to mercilessly pound the Chechen countryside wherever rebels might be hiding; paving the way for Russian ground troops. Since rebels often hide in villages, civilians have suffered greatly as a result of Russia's new casualty minimizing strategy. As the Russian army moves deeper into Chechnya, it leaves a swath of devastated villages, home to maimed...
...should not be surprising that Chechens would be up in arms following this kind of treatment. But their suffering at the hands of Russia extends back much further. Chechnya only became part of Russia after 19th-century wars. During World War II, Stalin was suspicious of their loyalty, and deported almost the entire nation to Central Asia in cattle trucks, a journey which perhaps a third of them did not survive. Unsurprisingly, they declared themselves independent as many minorities in the fomer U.S.S.R. did, starting the first Chechen war, from which they emerged with a limited form of autonomy...
...Administration and intelligence officials tell time they believe she was taken in retaliation for the U.S. visa clampdown. Other spy watchers point to the expulsion midyear of two Russian spies from the U.S. and Russian posturing ahead of parliamentary elections this month. Leberknight has until Dec. 11 to leave Russia. But compared with cold war days, when snatched spooks might be held in solitary or beaten, she is likely to get out in one piece...
...internationalist who believes the U.S. should participate in multilateral organizations and work with allies. McCain is more openly critical of China, calling its leaders "determined ... ruthless defenders of their regime"; but he and Bush support Chinese membership in the World Trade Organization. And both hammer the Administration for its Russia policies, for sending U.S. troops on too many peacekeeping missions and for a "mystifying uncertainty" about how to intervene in the world...
...talk much about domestic hot buttons like health care and Social Security, or about his swelling poll numbers, or even about campaign-finance reform. "I want to talk for a moment about Chechnya," he said to a few reporters on his campaign bus, before launching into a critique of Russia's "brutal to the extreme" war and announcing that if he were President, he'd move to cut off the International Monetary Fund's loans to Moscow...