Word: spetsnaz
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...colonel of the Russian Army and, until recently, a member of the Duma, was dismissed as the Chechen regional head of Putin's United Russia Party. His brother Sulim, also a hero of Russia and a Lieut. Colonel of the Russian Army (and until recently commander of the Spetsnaz Vostok battalion in Chechnya), was stripped of his command and placed under investigation by Moscow under Kadyrov's pressure. The killer shot Ruslan point-blank in downtown Moscow, penetrating an armor-plated car by way of a slit in a window while the Chechen leader...
...assault, Moscow downplayed the drama. Four hours after the attack began, the Kremlin announced it was all over. But sporadic clashes erupted during the night, and the next morning, guerrillas were still inside the souvenir shop and held a police station. Eventually, a group of élite Russian Spetsnaz soldiers with gas masks and small grenade launchers edged along the side of the souvenir shop. Shortly before their assault, Russia's Deputy Prosecutor General, Vladimir Kolesnikov, stressed that women were being held hostage inside. "We have to act with surgical precision," he said. Under cover of heavy machine-gun fire...
...forces--and much better track records. Britain has just two: the Special Air Service (SAS), which fights on land, and the Special Boat Squadron (SBS), deployed at sea. The Germans have Grenzschutzgruppe (GSG-9), the elite commandos of the Border Protection Group. The Soviets have special forces (known as Spetsnaz) attached to every Red Army unit to perform intelligence gathering and to operate behind enemy lines. In Afghanistan, small (ten-to-15-man) Spetsnaz teams have begun to disrupt the ability of the rebel mujahedin to move freely at night on their supply trails. Israel also has special forces attached...
...into the theater was the key ingredient in a daring rescue raid. As early as Day One of the hostage standoff, diggers had been tunneling underneath the theater in preparation for an assault. Now in the early hours of Saturday, gunshots from inside had forced into action the waiting Spetsnaz commando troops in the elite Alfa and Vympel antiterror units of the Federal Security Service. The Chechen hostage takers, it seemed, were about to fulfill their death vow. They had sworn that if Russian President Vladimir Putin had not declared an end to the war in Chechnya by Saturday...
...safe side," he says. "They were well aware of the repercussions for them should the gas attack fail." There was a shattering blast and the rattle of gunfire; then the troops smashed through doors, shooting down hostage takers still capable of firing back. Spetsnaz shot sleeping suicide bombers in the temple at point-blank range. "When a person wears two kilos of plastic explosive, we didn't see any other way of neutralizing them," said a member of the assault team. Ringleader Movsar Barayev sprawled dead on his back on stage with a Cognac bottle--strangely--by his side...