While Washington D.C. is buzzing about today's Inauguration of President Barack Obama, on the other side of the world, the Taliban apparently haven't gotten the message of "hope and change". The Taliban are seizing territory in Pakistan, threatening the vital overland supply line for the U.S. and NATO mission in Afghanistan. Taliban fighters have burned trucks carrying supplies up the mountain highway through the fabled Kyhber Pass, and in the last few days they have stepped up their offensive in the Swat Valley, only a hundred miles from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. The Taliban are burning schools for the crime of teaching little girls how to read, as well as to demonstrate the powerlessness of the Pakistani Army and security services, who reportedly refuse to patrol at night.
If Pakistan cannot secure a valley near its own capital, it is not even remotely capable of taking on the Taliban in their Pashtun strongholds near the mountanous Afghan border. In 2008 the U.S. responded to the Pakistani' government's inability or unwillingness to fight the Taliban by stepping up Special Forces and air raids deep into Pakistan. But the cost in terms of civilian lives lost in bombing suspected Taliban hideouts in villages has been high, in terms of lost goodwill among the Afghan people and faltering support for the NATO mission in Afghanistan among America's European allies.
Click on the extended post to read why Russia matters to President Obama's project of saving the U.S. mission in Afghanistan.
Russia Sends More Warships to Indian Ocean Somali Pirates Hold Supertanker Hostage
Charles Ganske
Pirates based in lawless regions of Somalia have become increasingly brazen in their attacks on merchant ships in the Indian Ocean.
The Russian Navy announced yesterday that it is sending another warship to the Indian Ocean to protect surface shipping from pirates. The Russian frigate is being dispatched after pirate gangs based in Somalia seized a supertanker near the Horn of Africa. The Sirius Star, a Saudi-flagged supertanker carrying two million barrels of crude, was seized this week by pirates operating nearly 500 miles off the coast of eastern Africa.
The Star is one of the largest vessels of its kind in the world, roughly the size of a U.S. aircraft carrier, and is manned by a 25-man multinational crew. Somali pirates are demanding millions in ransom money to release the ship and its crew. Unless their demands are met within ten days, the pirates have threatened to harm the crewmembers and hinted at causing a catastrophic oil spill. The Somali pirates are employing not only the traditional cigarette speedboats to attack merchantmen close to the coast, but also "mother ships", GPS devices and satellite phones that can extend their reach hundreds of miles offshore.
VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia - RIA Novosti reports that as many as 11 people were killed and 43 were injured on Thursday in an explosion at a bus stop in the center of the capital of Russia's North Caucasus republic of North Ossetia. The chief doctor at the hospital treating the wounded said most of the casualties were students aged 17 or 18.
Police reports put the death toll at 11, while the republic's Health Ministry said 10 people died. A police source said the blast was probably caused by an explosive device set off outside a public minibus as passengers got off. The North Ossetian president's press service said a suicide bomber could have detonated the device, which was equivalent to 300-500 grams (0.7-1.1 lbs) of TNT and stuffed with shrapnel to increase the killing power.
Russian Plane Hijackers: Drunks in Need of Attention
Yuri Mamchur
Russia has witnessed a lot of terrorist attacks in the past, including bombings of passenger airliners. These tragic events have led to very tight security measures and low passenger tolerance towards potential hijackers.
In the last 10 days, Russian airlines witnessed two new “attacks.” The first one happened on October 15, when a passenger on a Turkish Airlines A320, travelling from Antalya to St. Petersburg, passed a note to the pilots demanding to land the aircraft in Strasburg. Otherwise, he threatened to detonate explosives and take down the airplane with all of the passengers. When the “hijacker” tried to approach the pilots’ cabin, he was tackled and beaten by the passengers. The plane landed, as originally planned, in St. Petersburg. The investigators found no explosives on the now thoroughly beaten hijacker. He was a leader of a non-existent self-proclaimed political party who simply wanted to “gain the media attention.” He gained more than that; little attention, but plenty of injuries and jail time.
Today, on October 24, one of the passengers on a Russian Sky Express Boeing 737, travelling from the resort city of Sochi to Moscow, passed a note to the pilots. He wanted to go to Vienna, or else… the usual threats. The pilots landed the plane in Moscow where the FSB, ambulances, police, and counter-terrorist SWAT teams were ready to storm the plane. The “terrorist” happened to be a drunken passenger who had been recently released from a mental institution. In 2002, Oleg Vasyanovich, the self-proclaimed “terrorist,” killed his own mother. The court found him mentally ill and sentenced him to mandatory psychiatric treatment. Mr. Vasyanovich was released on Friday from the psychiatric institution where he was undergoing therapy. He immediately bought a plane ticket, got drunk, and decided to become a terrorist. It is unclear at this moment whether Mr. Vasyanovich will have to return to the mental institution, or if he will face up to eight years in prison.
Olmert Meets with Medvedev; Israel Presses Russia on Arms Sales to Iran
Yuri Mamchur
Israeli Prime-Minister Ehud Olmert and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow (Photo by Itar-Tass)
The sale of S-300 surface to air missiles by Russia to Iran has not been confirmed either by Moscow or Teheran. However, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert urged Russia against selling weapons to Iran in his meetings with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday and Tuesday. The best version of the S-300 system, known by NATO as the SA-20, can track 100 targets and fire on planes 120 kilometers away. Hours before Olmert’s arrival, Rosoboronexport, the Russian arms export agency, said that it had no information on Russian plans to deliver the SAM system to either Iran or Syria, reported Russia’s Interfax news agency.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi said: “Iran’s defensive might is based on our indigenous capabilities, and whatever action that helps with expanding and strengthening our military and defensive might, we’ll look into that. We have good defense cooperation with the Russians. One example would be anti-aircraft systems. We have had good cooperation and we continue to cooperate with them.”
Terrorists Attack Southern Russia On Russian Independence Day
Yuri Mamchur
Terrorists set houses on fire, and killed and kidnapped civilians in the small Chechen town of Benoy-Vedeno. The attack may have been coordinated with other terrorist acts in the Caucuses.
June 12 was Russia’s Independence Day. Generally, Russians do not quite understand why this holiday celebrates “independence,” and who exactly the Russians gained their independence from in June 1990. However, this year the evening of and the morning after the holiday were marked by explosions, shootings, killings, house burnings, and kidnappings that occurred in Chechnya, Dagestan, and Ingushetia, all during the same 12 hours.
First, the Russian Republic of Dagestan saw a powerful explosion at 5:40 am. The bomb was detonated in downtown Makhachkala, just 150 meters (450 feet) from the city administration building. One 48-year-old jogger was severely injured in the blast, and died on the way to the hospital.
A few hours later, a grocery store in Nazran (Ingushetia) suffered a powerful explosion that killed four people, including a 14-year-old girl. Local authorities said that the explosion was caused by household gas. Whether this is true or not, the cruel murders, kidnappings and house-burnings that took place in Chechen town of Benoy-Vedeno were clearly caused by Islamic terrorists.
Kids walking home from school in Gudermes, Chechnya (Photo by the New York Times)
Many positive political and economic developments are taking place in Moscow. Russia Blog has noticed that many of these events have been ignored since the election of the new Russian President, Dimitry Medvedev. The doom-and-gloom scenario predicted by many Washington think-tanks did not take place, and many scholars and journalists hostile to Russia ran out of negative steam relatively fast.
Serious news reporting about the war-torn Caucasus region of Chechnya has disappeared from the Western media coverage as well. Chechnya and its capital city of Grozny are in far better shape today than they were just three years ago. Nearly half a million Chechen refugees have returned to their homes and nearly 100,000 private businesses have been started in the recovering region. However, terrorism remains a problem, and minor attacks on Chechen and Russian security forces still take place on a weekly basis.
For more detailed reporting and analysis of the terrorist attacks happening in the region, please visit the website of the Russia-Eurasia Daily Watch.
A Russia Today TV news clip about the apparent terrorist attack
Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) confirmed today that a 4.5 pound bomb exploded on an express train between Moscow and St. Petersburg last night. The explosion happened at 10:43 p.m. local time while the train was travelling through the Novgorod region approximately 310 miles north of Moscow. The blast was powerful enough to derail twelve passengers cars and one locomotive. At least sixty people were seriously injured as a result of the attack.
Russian prosecutors believe that at least one of the suspects may have been captured on video surveillance footage. After diverting more than fifty trains following the attack, Russian Railways repaired the damaged section of track today and resumed regular train service between Moscow and St. Petersburg this evening.
Click on the links to the BBC and RIA Novosti to read more updates on this story.
The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), the North African branch of Al-Qaeda, has claimed credit for a roadside bomb attack that killed a Russian engineer last Saturday.
"Mujahedeen (Islamic warriors) using a high intensity bomb targeted the convoy of Russian infidels working for the Russian company Stroytransgaz," according to the statement signed by the Al-Qaeda Organization in the Maghreb..."We dedicate this modest conquest to our Muslim brothers in Chechnya ... victims of the criminal (Russian President Vladimir) Putin."
Three Algerians who were in the same minibus with the foreigners also died in the bombing, and four Britons, a Canadian, and two Lebanese nationals were wounded. This is the first successful attack on foreign workers in Algeria since December.
While there has been a lot of talk lately about a new Cold War brewing between the U.S. and Russia, it is important to remember who is the real enemy of the civilized world - the international jihadist movement. In the last decade, Russian citizens have frequently been targeted by jihadists, but today Chechnya is more stable than it has been at any time since 1994. The successful counterinsurgency in Chechnya should give Americans hope that terrorists can be defeated, and that populations taken hostage by terrorism can eventually be turned against their captors.
German police have told the Berliner Zeitung this week that they are looking into the possibility that radiation poisoning victim Alexander Litvinenko and his associate Dimitry Kovtun were involved in smuggling polonium out of Russia. According to RIA Novosti, one German police source told the Berliner Zeitung that the polonium 210 shipment that killed Litvinenko could have been valued at $25 million. German detectives have found traces of polonium in Dimitry Kovtun's apartment in Hamburg, and Russian investigators are treating him as a potential witness in the murder case.
Mr. Kovtun, a former member of the FSB who now works as a businessman, has denied any involvement in the poisoning death of Alexander Litvinenko. Andrei Lugovoy, who worked as a bodyguard for Boris Berezovsky in the late 1990s, has also proclaimed his innocence. Both men met with Alexander Litvinenko on November 1, a few hours before the ex-FSB agent became violently ill with radiation poisoning. Both have now undergone medical examinations to determine if they were irradiated, with the results likely to be returned by Friday. For investigators, determining Lugovoy and Kovtun's radiation exposure levels could prove to be very important in assembling their case.
Special Report by The Real Russia Project of Discovery Institute
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. media’s overarching, if unspoken, perception of Russia and Eastern Europe is that this region doesn’t matter much any more. Though some still see Russia as a dangerous enemy, most mainstream media appear to have lost interest in what happens there, except for occasional sensational events. As a result, there is inadequate awareness in America of the fascinating cultural, political and economic developments taking place in today’s Russia.
Relying on old Cold War stereotypes ignores centuries of Russia’s history and shows a lack of curiosity about its future. Such indifference is not in the interest of America or its citizens, and it threatens to shut down imagination about potential cooperative relations with Russia and her neighbors. The Real Russia Project aims to focus on the emerging new Russia with accurate and fair reporting and analysis—without fear or favor.
Former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami - "reformist" or figurehead?
Many gifted writers and people who were close enough to smell the ashes have written retrospectives this weekend about today's anniversary. Many commentators have asked what our country has learned, if anything, from the last five years of war with Islamic fascists.
In terms of the West's will to win the struggle and the question of whether we actually believe in our stated values, I could only think of the stark contrast between Alexaksandr Solzhenytsin's commencement address in 1978 and this week's speech by former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami at Harvard. The contrast between the two messages is that between wounds from a friend and kisses from an enemy.
Today is the second anniversary of the bloody end to the siege of school number one in the North Ossetian town of Beslan. The website PravdaBeslana ("Beslan Truth") has posted in its entireity C.J. Chivers' article "The School" from the June 1, 2006 issue of Esquire magazine. I hope Esquire's editors will understand that this is a public service and will allow the whole text to remain freely available on the web.
For anyone still wondering how the terrorists carried out this atrocity or why the response from Russian security forces was agonizingly slow for the hostages held captive for over 48 hours, it is useful reading. I got the same sickening feeling in my stomach when I started to read this piece as I did watching United 93's depiction of the beautiful, uneventful dawn of September 11, 2001.
MOSCOW -- Yesterday a bombing occurred at Cherkizovsky, one of the city's largest open air marketplaces. Ten people are dead and forty injured. A little town within the big city, the Chekizovsky market sells textiles and household items. The majority of business owners leasing space at the market are immigrants from former Soviet republics, mostly people from the Caucuses; and yesterday they were targeted by skinhead terrorists.
This explosion is the first terrorist violence Moscow has suffered in many months. What is most disturbing to Russians and foreigners alike is that the attack was not work of Chechen jihadists or other Islamist terrorists. Instead, the bomb was likely placed by homegrown Slavic fascists, to target Russia’s minorities.
Russia Blog has discussed the problem of neo-fascism and racist violence in Russia in several posts (see the Crime section). Last May Day, skinheads proudly marched through the streets of Moscow, chanting anti-Semitic, anti-American and anti-black slogans. Yesterday the skinheads dramatically escalated their war on Russia’s minorities from racist attacks on individuals to terrorism against ethnic community landmarks.
Today there were two well-executed terrorist attacks against government officials in Dagestan, a southern province of Russia. Dagestan is Russia's southernmost republic and borders the war-torn province of Chechnya. Although Chechnya is more peaceful than at any time since 1994, a few separatists still want to shatter the fragile peace in the region. Terrorist gunmen ambushed two state officials and their bodyguards in two separate roadside attacks. As a result, the General Prosecutor (prokuror) of the city of Buynaks is dead, the head of the Dagestan’s police force was severely injured, and several policemen and innocent civilians were killed.
The first attack began a few minutes after Bitar Bitarov, the general prosecutor for the city of Buynaks, left home for work. Terrorists detonated a roadside bomb near Bitarov's Mercedes 600 sedan and two other cars carrying his bodyguards. After detonating the bomb, terrorists opened fire on the convoy with machine guns. The general prosecutor lost his arm in the explosion and was shot several times. Mr. Bitarov died from his wounds a few hours later in a nearby hospital. Mr. Bitarov’s driver and bodyguards were also treated in the emergency room.
Putin Condemns Hezbollah, Supports Israel; Kadyrov Kills More Terrorists
Yuri Mamchur
Prince Saud Al-Feisal and President Putin in Moscow
With the world’s headlines currently dominated by news from the Israeli-Hezbollah War, it's surprising how few English-language media outlets have noticed the statement President Putin delivered yesterday in Moscow, after his meeting with the Foreign Minister of Saudi Arabia, Saud Al-Feisal. Putin said “Russia condemns any attempts to solve any problems through resorting to terrorism…the state of Israel has a right to live in peace and it should exercise it.”
While Putin was visiting with the Saudi Minister, Chechen Prime-Minister Ramzan Kadyrov was visiting Russian youth organizations for a political summer session on Lake Seliger (located between Moscow and St Petersburg), where he announced that two more Chechen terrorist commanders have been neutralized; with one killed and another captured. Hozh-Ahmed Dushayev, the “Emir” of Kurchaloevsky Region and his partner were responsible for the most recent terrorist attacks in the now peaceful province of Russia.
Basayev having the remains of his foot surgically removed
CNN is reporting this morning that Shamil Basayev, the terrorist who bragged about planning the Beslan massacre, has been killed by Russian security forces. This victory is far more important to Russians than the killing of Zarqawi was for the Americans in Iraq - this is the equivalent of us nailing Osama Bin Laden.
Russian television showed Patrushev meeting Monday with Putin to tell him about the special operation in Ingushetia -- a republic bordering Chechnya -- in which Basayev was killed in the early morning hours of Monday.
The Russian agents exploded a truck bomb next to several cars in which Basayev and other rebels were riding, according to Interfax, which was quoting Ingush Deputy Prime Minister Bashir Aushev.
"This is retaliation he deserves for killing our children in Beslan, Budennovsk, all the terrorist acts his bandits perpetrated in Moscow and other regions of Russia, including Ingushetia and the Chechen Republic," Patrushev said in an Interfax report.
Law enforcement officials in Ingushetia told Interfax Basayev's body was in pieces but it was identified by his head and by the fact that he had earlier lost a foot.
Twelve other Chechen rebels were killed in the operation, the official said.
A statement on website www.kavkazcenter.com said the Chechen rebel leadership was not making any comment yet, Reuters news agency said.
The U.N. Security Council put Basayev on its official terrorist list last year after Washington classified him as a threat to the United States.
Russia Blog congratulates the Russian security forces for a job well done. We know that Basayev's death is small comfort to the families of his victims, but it is a huge step towards peace and prosperity in the Caucuses and another stinging defeat for the global jihad.
UPDATE1: Russian newspapers are quoting President Bush's comment this afternoon at the G-8 Summit press conference, "If this is the person who planned the murders of the children of Beslan, he got what he deserved."
UPDATE2: U.S. Army National Guard Captain Jason Van Steewyk echoes my thoughts exactly about how, even in death, the AP cannot bring itself to use the t-word for a child killer.
UPDATE3: The latest AP story today uses the word "terrorized" and describes Basayev as a "ruthless warlord". Perhaps I spoke too soon.
Click on the extended post to see Shamil Basayev's legacy - WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES
Human Right Group Calls Putin’s Order to Kill Terrorists Illegal; Duma Makes It Legal
Yuri Mamchur
Russian Spetsnaz squad in action
After Putin’s recent order to “find and destroy” the Islamic terrorists who killed Russian embassy workers in Iraq, several human rights organizations like “Memorial” and Committee “Citizenship Cooperation” (Grazhdanskoe Sodeystvie) accused Putin of being authoritarian and ignorant of UN conventions and international law. Yesterday, the Duma ignored this criticism of the president and instead expressed their support for his firm message. By unanimously approving an entire packet of anti-terrorism bills in their most conservative form, the Russian Parliament moved past earlier debates and granted the President new powers and funds to counter international terrorism.
According to one new law, the president can now order Russian spetsnaz or intelligence groups to execute operations in foreign countries. The new law was tempered by a provision mandating that the President needs the Federal Assembly’s approval before he can utilize Russian military forces. Anatoly Kulikov, the former chief of MVD (Russian police) and current Member of Parliament, explained that the President, as Commander-in-Chief, did not get any extraordinary powers in the new bill. The purpose of the bill is simply to make Russian citizens feel safer while travelling and working abroad.
Moscow- Mayor Yuri Luzhkov is hosting Saudi prince Salman bin Abdel Asis al Saud in Moscow this week. On Wednesday President Putin personally met with the prince and chose this particular meeting to announce to the world Russia’s response to the jihadists who murdered four Russian diplomatic workers last week in Iraq: “find and destroy”.
Not many people in the world are aware that since Putin was appointed President in 1999, Russia has revived its tradition of hunting down terrorists abroad. Given the traditional centralization of powers in Russia and the common national goal of revenge, there will be no Russian newspapers posting details about ongoing counterterrorist operations on their front pages, as happens with the New York Times in America. The Russian Duma is also not the U.S. Congress; Putin’s order “to kill” has elicited nary a word of dissent.
Last week, four kidnapped Russian embassy workers were murdered by terrorists in Iraq. You can download a video that includes verses about jihad, the beheading of one hostage, and another hostage being shot in the head. You can read media coverage of this sickening act from Reuters, Euronews, BBC and CNN.
RussiaBlog would like to note three facts not widely mentioned in the Western media. First of all, the Russian Foreign Ministry blames the United States and Coalition forces for not providing better security around the embassies in Baghdad. While it is difficult to hold someone legally responsible for atrocities committed by fanatics, the Russian Foreign Ministry does have a point: why was it so easy to kidnap diplomatic workers only 1,000 feet away from their embassy?
Russian Diplomats Have 48 Hours to Live; Chechen Terrorist Commander Killed
Yuri Mamchur
The Mujahadeen Shura Council in Iraq logo
To my great surprise, none of the major U.S. networks are reporting at this hour about the four Russian diplomats kidnapped earlier this month in Iraq. Today their kidnappers announced that the diplomats will be executed in 48 hours unless Russia agrees to their demands.
On June 3, 2006, a Chevrolet Tahoe carrying five Russian diplomats was cut off by a mini-van and a sedan just 1,200 feet away from the Russian embassy in Baghdad. The diplomats were shot at by gunmen armed with assault rifles. Vitaliy Titov, one of the diplomats, was severely wounded and died later that day. Four more embassy workers were kidnapped.
Today, some organization calling itself “The Mujahadeen Shura Council in Iraq” announced that “even though Russia didn’t participate in the Iraqi invasion, its government was supportive of the Crusader American invasion”. Now the “council” wants Russian Federal forces (police and army) to withdraw from Chechnya and free all Muslim prisoners in Russia within 48 hours, otherwise the diplomats will be executed. The leaders of Mujahideen Shura Council added: “But we say to those people that we do jihad against the enemies of Allah and make His Rulings prevail everywhere in the land. For us every Muslim in the world is a brother, and for him, we sacrifice our money and our people if he encounters anything. How can you ask us to forget what the weakened Muslims are encountering from the Russian government and its people?”
Yesterday Chechnya celebrated the 100 days of Ramzan Kadyrov being prime minister of the state. Ramzan Kadyrov is son of assassinated president Akhmad Kadyrov. He is very popular among common Chechens and also is a good friend with the Kremlin. Since Putin managed to get this twenty nine year old Chechen on his side, the violence in Chechnya has dropped almost to zero; Chechnya got its first centralized government in history; many schools, hospitals and bridges destroyed by a decade of war have been rebuilt.
Kadyrov has a genuine 85% approval rating by Chechens, while being fully backed and supported by the Kremlin. One hundred days ago he gave a promise to Chechens that he would leave his position, if the population and the parliament weren’t satisfied with his work. Through the day Kadyrov was very busy, and even didn’t show up at some of the events celebrating the beginning of operations of a new middle school, new dance club, new hospital, new bridge, new stadium named “Ramzan”, etc.
Immediately after hearing Vice President Dick Cheney’s negative remarks about Russia, I thought to myself: things just don’t connect. Cheney's comments outraged both Russians and Americans alike, especially some people I know well who have spent considerable time in both countries. A good friend of mine who is an American lawyer, and has been doing business (and supporting the GOP) in Russia for nearly twenty years was dumbstruck by the Vice President’s remarks.
At the same time, I have been trying to decide what to write about Putin’s annual address to the Russian nation. Unfortunately, two long business trips prevented me from spending time on either topic.
So today, when I didn’t find any immediate Russian news to report, I decided to simply write about Russia as it is today, in the here and now. Recent events lend themselves to just such an informative and critical overview.
By now I’m sure you have heard about Hamas visiting Moscow, and Russia's demographic crisis, with the country possibly losing 1/3rd of its 140 million people by 2040. There is also the ongoing tragedy of Russian army conscripts being brutalized by their comrades, with some losing body parts and others going AWOL or committing suicide to escape daily torment at the hands of their comrades. Many of the same thugs who torture their fellow soldiers also display their adolescent ultranationalism by joining skinhead groups and killing blacks and gays.
Why Did Russian Intelligence Pass Secrets to Saddam?
Charles Ganske
By now nearly every major U.S. news outlet and numerous blogs have commented on the Pentagon's release of captured Iraqi documents revealing that Russian intelligence officers were supplying Saddam information on American battle plans before the U.S.-led invasion. Reports of Russian involvement in pre-war Iraq have circulated since 2002, starting with allegations from Israeli and Pentagon sources that Russians helped Saddam hide his weapons of mass destruction in Syria.
RIA Novosti is reporting the Russian Foreign Ministry's vehement denials. The Foreign Ministry suggests that the Americans are just trying to distract their people from the growing Sunni-Shi'a violence in Iraq. It doesn't help the Foreign Ministry's case that the documents appear authentic, consistent with other Iraqi Intelligence Services (IIS) memoranda. It also doesn't help that one Russian retired general took credit in 2003 for teaching the Iraqis how to resist the American invaders the way Red Army fought the Germans during World War II. Retired generals of course, are free to say and do nearly anything they want, and several in the U.S. have harshly criticized the decision to invade Iraq. But perhaps the Foreign Ministry would have more credibility if it acknowledged that several former Russian intelligence officers and ranking military officers were in Iraq just days before the war began.
Moscow Composer Escapes Car Bomb, Novgorod Factory Manager Shot
Yuri Mamchur
The Bush Administration, after condemning last week’s elections in Belarus as rigged, has declared this week’s parliamentary elections in Ukraine to be relatively "free and fair".
Meanwhile, yesterday in Russia, there were two major suspected mob incidents and one police shootout that resulted in several dead terrorists.
Moscow, Russia – Someone wired the car of Vladislav Kazenin, President of the Russian Union of Composers, with a bomb. However the bomb maker did a poor job of wiring the device to Kazenin’s Audi A-6 sedan. When Kazenin and his driver left the Union’s building, they found one of the car’s windows smashed. They carefully searched the vehicle and found a grenade with wires tied into the seat. They called the police, who dispatched the bomb squad to disarm the device. No one was hurt in the incident.
Novgorod, Russia - At 9:45 pm Moscow time, Vladimir Dugenez, the general manager of a local automobile factory, was shot repeatedly by several gunmen armed with automatic rifles. Mr. Dugenez was wounded in the head, chest, arms and stomach. Mr. Dugenez is being treated at a local medical facility. The attack is likely “business-related” and is typical of Russian organized crime.
Russian Police Kill Terrorist Commander in Dagestan
Hasavyurt, Dagestan (Russian state bordering Chechnya) – Russian police conducted a successful operation against jihad terrorists holed up inside an abandoned house. There were no casualties reported among the Russian policemen, and they still don’t know how many terrorists were killed. The police unit was apparently determined to take no chances, and the house was reduced to rubble. What is known at this hour is that one of the terrorists holed up inside was identified as the so-called “Emir” of Hasavyurt, Samir Pashayev. Russian police are still identifying the rest of the bodies.
Reuters latest headline(March-07-06 12:50 PST) is "Rice, Lavrov expose widening U.S.-Russia rift". The story talks about how the U.S. and Russia are supposedly deeply divided over how to engage the Middle East, because the Kremlin invited Hamas leaders to Moscow and has offered to enrich Iran's uranium in Russian reactors.
Russia's diplomatic moves on Iran and Hamas come amid rising strains over what Washington sees as President Vladimir Putin's increasing grip on power, one that belies his status as chair of July's summit of the Group of Eight industrialized democracies.
On Tuesday, Rice and Lavrov stood stiffly and at one point the Russian had to reassure Rice, a former Soviet specialist, he had not planted a question from a Russian journalist about trade. "You confirm that you did not (plant it), right?" said Rice, who has complained about the erosion of media freedoms under Putin. That sense of suspicion contrasted with the early days of Bush's presidency when Bush said he trusted Putin after looking into his soul.
While it is unfortunate to see Rice and Lavrov sparring in front of the cameras, once you get past the hype to substance, these apparent differences seem trivial. Hamas, as we've reported here at Russia Blog, received nothing but headlines in Moscow, and its representatives were humiliated. The Kremlin repeated the U.S. position that Hamas must renounce terrorism and enter negotiations with Israel. We've also reported at Russia Blog that Iran has consistently rejected Russia's offer to peacefully enrich uranium at facilities open to international inspectors, which is why Lavrov responded to a reporter's question by saying that the proposal had never been formalized.
March 3, Moscow, Russia – Hamas representatives came to the Russian capital on a commercial flight, and in their first statement they said that they were not going to recognize Israel, and as long as the “occupiers” don’t leave their territory there can be no peace talks. If commentators in the West believe that Putin supports this kind of terrorist movement and terror-friendly governments, well, the West is wrong – Putin canceled his appointment with the Hamas leaders, and instead they will hold talks only with the Russian Foreign Minister, who has already stated several times that negotiating is the only way to solve the problem of Israel and Palestine. The Foreign Minister added that Hamas can’t hope for any kind of political and international future without getting serious about ending terrorism against Israel.
On the last day of the Hamas leaders' three days in Moscow, March 5, they will be regular tourists, admiring Russian architecture and the treasures of the Kremlin. The palace exhibitions are visited weekly by thousands of tourists - that's the closest Hamas leaders will get to Putin.
I’m always asked if Putin has relationships or mutual anti-American plans with Iran, Syria and the Palestinians, and I always answer, that if it appears as he does, this is only due only to the chaos in Russia. Russia fights the same war as the Americans and shares vital interests with the U.S.
In the meantime, a Chechen terrorist spokesman said that the “Mujahideen of Palestine are our brothers, and we regret their decision...they will shake hands with the killers of the true Muslims…” It appears that; Hamas has been humiliated and told to “get lost” by Putin, to “get serious” by Russia's Foreign Minister, and the visit outraged their jihadist "brothers" from Chechnya. All in all, not a bad week of work for Putin and the Russian Foreign Ministry.
The Pakistani Army has released information about their commando operation that killed a Chechen terrorist commander on the Afghan-Pakistan border. General Sultan of the Pakistani Army said that they have intelligence about a significant Chechen presence on the border region, which is used as a hide-out by fugitive Taliban and Al-Qaeda terrorists. During this particular operation 40 jihadists of several different nationalities were killed. The Chechen terrorist’s name was Imam; he has been wanted in Russia for some time. He was killed along with his three bodyguards on March 2, 2006.
Israel Embarrasses Putin by Releasing Hamas Video Glorifying Chechen Terrorists
Yuri Mamchur
According to the Jerusalem Post, Israel's Foreign Ministry is distributing several documents linking Hamas to the Chechen terrorists. The Hamas brochures include recruiting posters that glorify the "resistance" of Afghanistan, Chechnya, Palestine and other Muslim regions against the “invaders”. In a recruiting CD titled “Russian Hell”, a Hamas speaker praises the great achievements of the terrorists in Chechnya and urges young Muslims to join the jihad against the Russian police and military forces. Other videos distributed by Hamas show 18 year old Russian soldiers being tortured, beheaded, and crucified. The package released by the Israelis also includes posters of terror kingpins Shamil Basayev and the recently killed Arab jihadist al-Khattab. Basayev has boasted about planning the Beslan school massacre of 350 children, and is still at large.
The Russian FSB has not responded to the evidence yet, but they are investigating the truthfulness of the documents released by the Israelis. In the meantime, RussiaBlog readers are welcome to enjoy the fine artwork of Hamas:
Why Putin Invites Hamas to Moscow and the U.S. Media Ignores Russia's War
Yuri Mamchur
February 10, 2006, In Stavropolsky Kray - 100 miles away from Georgia, 200 miles away from Grozny, 16 "Chechen" (probably foreign) terrorists have fought a gun battle for the last 24 hours against Russian police and soldiers. Russian forces have used attack helicopters, tanks, and 300 troops to destroy several buildings in the village and kill 11 of the enemy fighters. Five jihadists, however, escaped from security forces.
One should ask: what about the human rights of ordinary Russian citizens? Well, the Russian army's first mission is to provide security and stability inside Russia (Chechnya is one of the Russia's 89 administrative regions, the equivalent of a U.S. state or territory). It was the inhabitants of Tukui-Mekteb, a town of 3,000 people near the city of Stavropal, who called local police to report huge stockpiles of ammunition and explosives hidden in a nearby house.
Four police officers responded to the citizen's tip. When they showed up to check out the house, they were shot dead by the terrorists with machine guns. Several minutes after this shooting, Russian Spetznaz commandos arrived, only to find that the jihadists had fled with their weapons. The 16 foreign fighters were reportedly part of a terrorist cell recruited by Shamil Basayev and the veteran Arab jihadist Hattab (who was recently killed by FSB forces).
According to RIA Novosti, the Kremlin is not happy with Iranian President Ahmadenijad's position rejecting any peaceful enrichment of uranium outside of Iran's borders. Of course, Iran's foreign minister was later trotted out after Ahmadenijad's belligerent remarks to say that Iran was still open to negotiations, provided that no more sanctions were imposed by the UN Security Council. Without military action, it appears the world is going to have to sleep tight with atomic bombs in the hands of the mullahs who have threatened to kick off nuclear Armageddon with Israel.
Ivanov has done very little to prevent Russian Army officers and NCOs from torturing and murdering the soldiers they are supposed to lead, so telling a few lies to a Western reporter is nothing in comparison.
A village in the Sunjensky Region of Ingushetia was attacked by jihadists last night. Several terrorists dressed in camouflage entered the village of Gagarino and randomly shot people with Kalashnikov assault rifles. Two civilians were killed, and two more were severely wounded. The incident occurred at 7:30 p.m. local time, and no one has been caught or arrested in relation with this attack. Please see the Terrorism section of Russia Blog to read more on the frequent terrorist attacks against ordinary Russians.
Spetnaz troops along with police and army units, supported by attack helicopters tried to kill eight terrorists in Dagestan. The operation became important when one of the terrorists was identified as a “senior jihadist”, who had participated in the Beslan massacre. The Kremlin insists that not a single terrorist escaped from the school that day, however the mothers of the dead children have a different opinion. It was important for the Russian government to destroy this terror cell.
However, the operation lasted nearly two days, and while five terrorists were killed and one injured, the “seniority” slipped away. Two Russian soldiers died and seven were wounded. This statistic tells you something about the preparation of young conscripts when fighting veteran Jihadists.
This week Russia agreed to sell $1 billion worth of weapons to Iran. Many American policy experts are trying to understand if this is part of some new Russian foreign policy. They are right to ask - why does Russia sell weapons to an Islamic theocracy that has armed Chechen terrorists and other Jihadists around the world?
Abu Omar Mohammed bin Abdullah al-Saif would’ve answered that it’s because Allah wants Russians to help the extremists with their Jihad. But after a life devoted to murdering civilians and children, Mr. Omar, etc. has been killed during a successful operation conducted by Russian forces. I’ll try to answer for him.
Russia is well-known for corruption and kick-backs on business contracts. RussiaBlog has reported about President Putin’s “gifts” and the bribing of the head of Rosvooruzhenie, among others (Rosvooruzhenie is the government company that deals with weapons sales).
I honestly believe that this is no realpolitik or other strategy on the part of Putin’s administration. The truth is that no one is in charge to prevent such exports; no one is actually considering what is going to happen to the missiles Russia is selling to Syria and Iran.
If you have 2 minutes of time, and want to expand your horizons, please visit this link, which will take you to the New York Times web page, and then once you are there, click the “Multimedia, Interactive Feature, Day of Terror in Beslan” link. It’s an interactive, uploading slide and video show with NYT commentary. To see a “different” opinion of a Jihadis overlord, please read Shamil Basayev’s comments on the “successfully carried out operation”.
I am grateful to the NYT for calling things with their names, these people are terrorists, not insurgents, or rebels, or whatever, as Russia Blog has previously discussed.
Dagestan, Russia – in the small Buynaksky region of Dagestan, a local “senior” terrorist Abdula Magomedov was injured and captured, after a successful police operation.
The night before, local police received information that the terrorists were hiding in the small village Girey-Avlak, and to be safe, officers waited for daylight and moved into the village with SWAT teams and court-issued warrants to search the local houses. However, they didn’t need the warrants, because as the jihadists spotted the law enforcement agents approaching, they opened fire with Kalashnikov assault rifles.
Two terrorists managed to run away, another one took his shoes off to climb a nearby mountain faster, but he was shot down (he didn’t climb fast enough). The leader was injured, while shooting back at the officers. Now Mr. Magomedov is in the local hospital under tight security, waiting for his trial date to face justice. Police found 20 canisters of explosives, tons of weapons, and other jihadist toys.
Russia Blog has written before about the Chechen War, and quoted Chechen terrorists, to give you a better understanding of what Russia is facing in its southern states. Here's part of a great article today posted on Tech Central Station:
Kavkaz-Center website, harbored and nourished by the European Union, aims to "bring to the world community the truthful information about the war, war crimes, the facts of genocide of the whole nation by the invading state and the position of the defending side -- the Chechen Mujahideen".
From Thursday's New York Times: ''Nalchik, Russia -- Insurgents launched a series of raids today in this southern Russian city, striking the area's main airport and several police and security buildings in large-scale, daytime attacks that left at least 85 people dead.''
"Insurgents," eh?
From Agence France Presse:
"Nalchik, Russia: More than 60 people were killed as scores of militants launched simultaneous attacks on police and government buildings . . ."
"Militants," you say?
From the Scotsman:
"Rebel forces battled Russian troops for control of a provincial capital in the Caucasus yesterday . . ."
"Rebel forces,'' huh?
From Toronto's Globe & Mail:
"Nalchik, Russia -- Scores of rebels launched simultaneous attacks on police and government buildings . . ."
"Rebels," by the score. But why were they rebelling? What were they insurging over? You had to pick up the Globe & Mail's rival, the Toronto Star, to read exactly the same Associated Press dispatch but with one subtle difference:
''Nalchik, Russia -- Scores of Islamic militants launched simultaneous attacks on police and government buildings . . ."
Ah, "Islamic militants." So that's what the rebels were insurging over. In the geopolitical Hogwart's, Islamic "militants" are the new Voldemort, the enemy whose name it's best never to utter. In fairness to the New York Times, they did use the I-word in paragraph seven. And Agence France Presse got around to mentioning Islam in paragraph 22. And NPR's "All Things Considered" had one of those bland interviews between one of its unperturbable anchorettes and some Russian geopolitical academic type in which they chitchatted through every conceivable aspect of the situation and finally got around to kinda sorta revealing the identity of the perpetrators in the very last word of the geopolitical expert's very last sentence.
Another Islamic terrorist attack rocked southern Russia yesterday. All the major global media outlets are writing about it: FOX News, NY Times, and the Associated Press. However CNN, prefers to post ‘"James Bond a blonde" as their second leading news story for the day. Maybe that’s why terrorism isn’t fought as well as it could be, because James Bond is more important for some news organizations than 100 people getting killed in Russia in one day.
Another comment I’d like to make, at the risk of repeating myself: the terrorists are not "militants", not "rebels" or "insurgents", and many of these people are not even Chechens or Russians! They are Islamic fascists, baby-killers, and mass murderers.
Here is a short quote from ITAR-Tass: “Six of the most gravely wounded were being flown to Moscow, 870 miles to the north, for treatment.” What this means is that there is no decent medical care in Russia, unless you have means and funds to fly 900 miles to the capital of the country. Now imagine that your child has a hard to cure disease, or serious trauma, and you happen to live a few time-zones away from Moscow on $40 a month with no electricity. What are your options? You can’t watch the blonde James Bond – that’s for sure.
And who do you think is fighting the “insurgents”? Of course, poor conscripted Russian soldiers.
Some Beslan families still challenge Kremlin claims
Yuri Mamchur
NALCHIK, Russia -- Allegations by witnesses of the Beslan hostage crisis, including claims the militants hid weapons in the school beforehand and that the principle helped them, have been disproved by a new investigation, a top prosecutor has said.
Many citizens believe the militants could have bribed their way through checkpoints into southern Russia. They also believe they were misled by the government, which initially reported fewer people in the school. Critics also complain that the military's response was bungled, resulting in needless deaths.
INGUSHETIA – Tuesday night police vehicles were shot at by Chechen terrorists. As the result, three police officers are dead, one injured; and as always you can find this news only on a few Russian news websites, tucked away between the articles about New Orleans and The New York Times laying off their employees. Somehow Russians are always very global thinkers, paying attention to events abroad, but they don't notice the pain occurring at home. This shooting is just another attack among many other dailyterrorist activities. Imagine if Iraq's terrorist insurgency were operating not on the Syrian but the Mexican border, aiming to conquer Arizona for Allah, and you have some idea of the challenge faced by Russia.
Conflict are growing in the troubled region, where emotions still run high over the Beslan school massacre.
By FRED WEIR - Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
NAZRAN, RUSSIA - Murat Zyazikov, the pro-Kremlin president of the southern Russian republic of Ingushetia, is a hunted man.
Since taking office in 2003, he has narrowly escaped assassination at the hands of a suicide car-bomber and a sniper, allegedly sent by local Islamic militants. In the past month alone, insurgents have bombed the motorcade of his deputy premier and opened fire on his security chief. A year ago, fighters loyal to Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev briefly seized the Ingush capital of Nazran, killing almost 100 police officers and government officials.
Mr. Zyazikov, a former general of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), shrugs all that off. "Things here are calm and peaceful," he told journalists at a meeting in his plush, golden-domed presidential palace. "These attacks against me and my officials are the work of desperate men who want to destabilize the situation in southern Russia. They hate the fact that we are building a worthy life for our people."
As the war in neighboring Chechnya grinds into its seventh year with no resolution in sight, conflicts are metastasizing around the troubled north Caucasus, which has been a zone of tension since it was conquered by Russia in the 19th century. The region is a patchwork quilt of warring ethnic groups and rival religions that makes Europe's other tangled knot, the Balkans, look tame by comparison.
Many experts say the Kremlin's grip, iron-hard in Soviet times, has slipped disastrously in recent years. "The Chechen conflict is spilling into neighboring republics, escalating the process of destabilization," says Alexei Malashenko, an analyst with the Carnegie Center in Moscow.
Zhairakhsky, a sparsely populated district amid the high, snow-capped mountains of southern Ingushetia, has remained relatively untouched by conflict. But, says local administrator Yakhya Mamilov, "if you stand on a mountaintop here and look around, you'll see wars flaring or brewing in every direction. It's impossible to build for the future with any confidence while these conditions last."
Rebel fighters from Chechnya, a few kilometers to the east, often take refuge among their Ingush ethnic kin in Zhairakhsky, locals say.
Further east is the Caspian Sea republic of Dagestan, with 32 constituent ethnic groups, where Islamist rebels stage almost daily bombings and ambushes against Russian security forces.
To the south and west two breakaway republics, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, are locked in long-simmering wars of independence against the post-Soviet state of Georgia. Just next door on another side is traditionally Christian North Ossetia, hereditary enemy of the mainly Muslim Ingush, with whom they fought a savage border war in 1992.
Moscow has tried to maintain its authority by phasing out "unreliable" local leaders, and replacing them with loyalists like Zyazikov. "This tactic is not working," says Alexander Iskanderyan, head of the Center for Caucasian Studies. "Moscow imagines that exchanging 'bad' officials with 'good' ones will change things, but the main trend we see is a steady loss of control."
Passions in Ingushetia and N. Ossetia are still seething over the Beslan school massacre a year ago. On Sept. 1, 2004, a squad of 32 terrorists, most of them ethnic Ingush, drove from Ingushetia and seized 1,200 hostages in Beslan's School No. 1, just across the border in N. Ossetia. Three days later Russian security forces launched a massive assault on the building, leaving 331 people dead, half of them children.
Zyazikov, and other pro-Kremlin officials, blame the outrage on "international terrorism." North Ossetia's acting president, Taimuraz Mamsurov, says the Beslan school siege was a deliberate attempt by "certain forces" to stir up ethnic war between Ingush and Ossetians. "Tensions have increased (since Beslan), that's natural," he says. "But I think we've succeeded in restraining our people from fulfilling that scenario."
Others doubt the danger has passed. "Everyone here is always talking about getting ready for war with the Ingush, to get even with them," says Madina Pedatova, a teacher at Beslan's spanking new School No. 8. "I'm terrified of it, but I'm sure it's coming."
Just across the heavily fortified Ingush-N. Ossetian border thousands of Ingush refugees forced from their homes in N. Ossetia in 1992 live in a sprawling, squalid refugee camp. Here the hatred is palpable. "The Ossetians are like Nazis. They drove us from our homes (in 1992) like cattle, showing no humanity," says Umar Khadziyev, unemployed, who lives in a small hut with his wife and three children.
Mr. Khadziyev says he condemns the Beslan attack, with its terrible death toll of children. But then he adds: "Do you know why the fighters drove past two Ossetian schools before taking School No. 1 in Beslan? It's because the Ossetians used that very school as a prison for our people in 1992. Yes, our women and children were held there, in that same gym, beaten up and denied food and water. Nobody talks about that, do they?"
For Moscow, the spreading unrest, fuelled by Islamic extremists in some republics and ancient ethnic antagonisms in others, poses an almost nightmarish challenge. After Beslan, President Vladimir Putin warned that the cost of failure could be "the destruction of Russia." Says Khadziyev, the Ingush refugee: "Our grandfathers told us the USSR would collapse one day. I'm sure that Russia is going to fall apart too."
Today is one year anniversary of the Beslan Islamofascist atrocity. Mothers of the killed children will spend three days in the gym, just like their children did a year ago before they were murdered.
Tomorrow four women of a group called "Mothers of Beslan" will meet with Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Many Russians believe that the tragedy happened due to the corruption among the border police and incompetent intelligence agencies. It is known that one of the Russian intelligence operatives who was supposed to participate in a few terrorist attacks (which he did to gain the trust of the terrorists), eventually became a double agent for money and made fools out of his superiors.
False leads confused border police about the terrorist activity around Beslan. And police officers in Russia are known for accepting cash bribes in American dollars. As the Chechen bin Laden Shamil Basayev bragged to the media, getting a few truckloads of gunmen and explosives through the checkpoints only cost the terrorists a few thousand dollars. All this has contributed to an enormous tragedy.
Parents of the victims have a very strong suspicion that the Russian government continues to cover up the corruption and complete incompetence surrounding the Beslan rescue operation, blaming the failure to save more kids on the only terrorist left alive and the parents themselves. According to one account of the final bloodbath at the school, the shooting that led the terrorists to set off their bombs and forced the final Spetsnaz assault came from enraged parents with Kalashnikovs, and not the Spetsnaz snipers.
Nonetheless, all this incompetence and corruption cannot obscure the fact that Russia remains at war with an adversary with a bottomless capacity for cruelty.
Parents of the massacred children want answers; hopefully Mr. Putin will have something to tell them about how future horrors like Beslan might be prevented.
The following is an excerpt from the "news article" from the Chechen terrorists' website Kavkaz Center. To appropriately read this material, make sure that you realize that "invaders" and "traitors" are 18 and 20 year old Russian kids drafted into the army, who are probably the sons of single mothers from poor families, doing their duty for their country against their will.
The "police officers from Kadyrov gang" are the Russian police officers. Kadyrov is the elected President of the Republic of Chechnya (the equivalent of the governor of a U.S. state).
THE "ARTICLE":
17 killed, wounded in Chechnya – AFP
Six Russian invaders were killed and six wounded in a 24 hour period of last Sunday to Monday in Chechnya, an AFP source inside the pro-Moscow puppet administration reported.
During 17 attacks on Russian positions five invaders were killed and five others were wounded.
A sixth soldier was killed in a landmine explosion near the southern town of Shatoi, and a sixth was wounded near Komsomolskoye, south of the capital Jokhar, while taking part in a demining operation.
Additionally, three Chechen so-called "police officers" from Kadyrov gang were wounded in the western town of Achkhoi-Martan during a skirmish with Mujahideen.
Two other traitors were wounded at Gekhi, near Urus-Martan, when Mujahideen attacked during a search operation in the village, Oman newspaper reported referring to AFP agency.
Gateway Pundit has excerpts from the Moscow Times article on the children of Beslan and their testimony against the only surviving member of the terrorist cell caught by Russian forces, Nurpasha Kulayev. If anyone doubts that the Chechen cause of autonomy has been hijacked by bloodthirsty nihilists, let them read these accounts.
The Moscow Times covers the outrage in Russia over a Russian journalist's ABC News interview with Chechen terrorist mastermind Shamil Basayev. Predictably, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists issued a condescending lecture to the Kremlin on freedom of speech, after Russia's Defense Minister declared ABC News persona non grata.
"It reflects the Kremlin's lack of understanding that free speech means tolerating the broadcast of views it finds uncomfortable or even reprehensible," CPJ executive director Ann Cooper said in an e-mailed statement. "It also exposes the Kremlin's failure to comprehend that -- in sharp contrast with Russia -- U.S. television operates independently of government."
Of course, the Kremlin understands that the U.S. government had nothing to do with the Nightline special, as a prominent Russian analyst made clear.
Mikhail Margelov, the chairman of the Federation Council's International Affairs Committee, said U.S. President George W. Bush should not be blamed for the broadcast. "I can say with confidence that no one should judge the position of President Bush's administration based on this interview," he told RIA-Novosti. "After the terrorist attack in Beslan, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said that the inhuman Basayev was not worthy of existence, and I think this exact position is close to that of the U.S. leadership."
Another bombing in Dagestan took place yesterday. Terrorists bombed the police station in Hasavyurt. After the bombing, the entire city was surrounded by a cordon of police and special forces. The terrorists were found trying to escape the city limits. While being chased by police cars, the terrorists opened fire with automatic rifles. The police returned fire. One terrorist was killed, another injured, while one managed to slip away.
One Colonel in the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs was killed. While most of the Western media focus on terrorist attacks in Iraq, Russia fights its own jihadist/criminal insurgency much closer to home, where retreat isn't an option without ceding its own territory to lawlessness.
Everybody knows now about the recent terrorist blasts in London, Baghdad, and now in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. However, few Western media outlets bother to report about the relentless campaign of almost daily terrorist bombings in Russia.
July 24, 2005 at 5:45 am, another train was blown up with 24 pounds of explosives in Dagestan, a southern Russian state bordering the secessionist province of Chechnya. One person died, four more were injured. This bombing didn’t cause as many victims as the others usually do, because it was executed on an early Sunday morning.
Maybe the little village of Bayramaul is not as big as London, and one dead Russian is not 88 dead Egyptians and 52 dead Londoners, but I do not think that these facts should make any difference for a true humanitarian, a civilized person, or simply a caring reporter.
Russian Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov has attacked the Prosecutor General's Office, saying that he "does not understand how after four years of the trial, a lawyer can be saying that the 'not guilty' decision of the second jury has absolutely nothing to do with justice".
Ivanov was responding to the Prosecutor's case against Captain Eduard Ulman and several fellow Spetsnaz soldiers, who were part of an elite Russian army unit deployed to Chechnya in January 2002. At that time, Russian forces received intelligence that the "field fighter" Arab terrorist Hassan Hattab and twenty other foreign jihadists were hiding in the village of Dai.
When an SUV exiting the village failed to stop at a checkpoint, Russian soldiers opened fire on the vehicle, killing one Chechen and wounding five more. After questioning the wounded Chechens, Captain Ulman contacted his superior, Major Alexei Perevelevsky. The Major then ordered Ulman to kill the Chechens.
Although the slayings were proven in court, Ulman and his men were acquitted of war crimes charges by two tribunals. Ulman and his men have since been promoted and continue to serve in the Army of the Russian Federation.
Chechnya is a former Soviet republic that remains Russian territory. Chechnya's status can be compared to the same as a state in the U.S.A. Chechnya is a Muslim region that started fighting to secede from the Russian Federation after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Russia Blog presents up-to-date news, facts and commentary on the state of events in Russia and the former Soviet Union. The blog is managed by Yuri Mamchur, Director of Discovery Institute's Real Russia Project . The blog is edited by Charles Ganske, a writer with the Discovery Institute.
