Word: vladimir
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Having taken at least some lessons from U.S. politicians, Russian President Vladimir Putin says that his critics abroad are undermining his country's battle against terrorism. In a rare three-and-one-half hour meeting with foreign scholars and journalists, including TIME, Putin Monday claimed that "some circles" in the West were encouraging separatist movements in Chechnya and other parts of the troubled Caucasus region on Russia's southern borders in order to keep Russia weak and distracted. He accused unidentified politicians, security services and commentators in several countries, including the U.S., France, Germany and the U.K., of meddling...
...Russian officials are still wading through the rubble of the Breslan school for more clues to the identities of the hostage-takers. Prosecutor-General Vladimir Ustinov says authorities so far believe there were 32 hijackers, including two women, who hid in a forest near the school building the evening before. They drove to the school in three cars packed with weapons and explosives, Ustinov told Putin in a briefing carried on Russian...
...Russians, the Kremlin's initial response to last Tuesday's nearly simultaneous plane crashes seemed all too familiar: another example of President Vladimir Putin's state of denial over the unflattering reality of the war in Chechnya. The catastrophe, which killed 90 people, occurred just a few days before a disputed presidential election in that breakaway republic; the two flights had departed from the same Moscow airport; the planes crashed within a minute of each other; eyewitness reports suggested that an explosion had downed one of the planes; and a hijack distress call preceded the crash of the other plane...
...horrifying carnage that ended the hostage crisis at a school in Beslan, in southern Russia, was a gruesome reminder of the abject failure of President Vladimir Putin's own "war on terror." At least 320 people are reported to have been killed Friday after Russian troops stormed a school to free more than 1,000 civilians, mostly women and children, held captive by a group of masked Chechen gunmen demanding that the authorities free their jailed comrades. As Russians reeled from the impact of a savage terror assault on children, President Putin on Saturday visited the scene and promised...
...signs of terrorism," the chief spokesman of the Federal Security Service (FSB), Sergei Ignatchenko, insisted last Wednesday. Transport Minister Igor Levitin dismissed the idea that the tragedies might be linked. "They belong to different air companies, and were flying to different locations," he told journalists. Meanwhile, President Vladimir Putin appeared on state TV, discussing the harvest and the new school year. By Friday, the official line was unraveling. The FSB soon confirmed what Russian security experts had suspected from the start - a powerful explosive, hexogen, had been found in the wreckage of both planes. As little...