Word: yeltsin
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...cease-fire and announced that he would reopen talks. The stated positions of the two sides would seem to leave nothing to talk about. Dudayev was demanding that Russia immediately pull out its forces and recognize the full independence he had proclaimed for Chechnya three years ago, while Yeltsin insisted as a precondition for any withdrawal that the Chechens disarm and end their secession. The view in Moscow was that by extending his ultimatum and appealing for new talks, Yeltsin had made significant concessions and was looking for a way to avoid continuing...
...soldiers that could be snuffed out in the promised guerrilla struggle; at week's end, at least 16 and possibly 70 Russians -- counts differed wildly -- and hundreds of Chechens had already fallen in heavy fighting. Even more ominous, a drawn-out campaign could deal a devastating blow to Boris Yeltsin's presidency and Russia's endangered democracy...
...heavy force on Dec. 11 to stop the rebellion, and the Chechens vowed to fight, both sides appeared to be drawing back from a blood-soaked showdown. As many as 40,000 Russian troops converged on the Chechen capital of Grozny but were holding off on a final assault. Yeltsin extended for 48 hours, until Saturday midnight, an ultimatum for Chechens to surrender their weapons. His first ultimatum was a flat failure; as it was about to expire Thursday, the Moscow news agency TASS reported that "not a single gun has been turned in." On Saturday, Moscow issued a harsher...
Certainly Yeltsin appeared unlikely to win any cheap or easy victory. His forces could probably storm and occupy Grozny, a city of 400,000, within hours. But that would begin rather than end the war. Dudayev has called on his ! people to "strike and withdraw, strike and withdraw" until the invaders flee in "fear and terror." That was the strategy Chechen forebears followed in fighting czarist armies. They lost, but it took the Russians 47 years between 1817 and 1864 to subdue them...
...officials anticipated, although they attributed the delays to efforts to limit civilian casualties. (Several international military analysts said Russian troops' lack of battle-readiness was the real reason.) There was also no sign Russia was nearing its goal of encircling Grozny with troops and armor. Still, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, in a message broadcast to the Chechen people, called on rebels to give up and vowed that Chechnya "will once again become a full-fledged region of the Russian Federation...