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TITLE: Chechen Rebel Strikes Embarrass Russia |
AUTHOR: Chris Stephen |
PUB: |
DATE: January 22, 2001 |
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Fierce fighting has erupted across Chechnya with a rebel offensive being launched on the eve of Council of Europe hearings on Russia's conduct in the war. Rebel forces hit 19 targets and penetrated Russian defences in the capital, Grozny, killing at least five servicemen in battles that raged throughout the weekend. The battles come as the Council of Europe prepares to meet early this week to consider whether to restore Russia's voting rights, which were suspended or its parliamentary assembly last year after reports of atrocities by its troops in the province. Fighting broke out late on Friday with an audacious ambush at a Russian barracks in the centre of the province's second town, Gudermes, east of Grozny. The next day, battles broke out around the country and in Grozny itself, with at least two soldiers killed in a series of street battles after rebels infiltrated the Russian defences around the city outskirts. Rebels also ambushed a troop convoy as it left the city, killing two soldiers and wounding eight. The rebel spokesman, Movladi Ududgov, speaking by satellite phone to Western news agencies, claimed nine Russian soldiers were killed during the Gudermes attack, although both sides commonly inflate casualty claims. The offensive appears timed not only as a show of strength, but to embarrass Moscow, which has sent its human rights representative, Vladimir Kalamanov, to attend hearings of the Council of Europe this week in Strasbourg.The Council of Europe suspended Russian voting rights and threatened an outright suspension, after reports of atrocities, illegal detentions and torture from the province. The head of the political affairs committee of the council's general assembly, Lord Judd, returned from a tour of the province last week reviewing progress in investigating the reported abuses.Russia had hoped to present the council with evidence that the fighting was over. Just hours before the offensive began, Moscow announced on Friday that military operations had succeeded in crushing the rebels. "The military part of the counter-terrorist operation has been long since finished," said a presidential spokesman, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, on Friday" All large and medium sized bandit units have been crushed." Later that same day, large and medium sized units began ambushes which also put a question mark over Moscow's declared change to a more aggressive strategy, announced before Christmas. Under pressure to end the war, the generals announced in December they would be sending troops out of their heavily protected bases to take on the guerrillas in the countryside. While military experts say this denial of movement is a vital component of an anti-guerrilla war, they doubt Russia has the numbers of well-trained and supported troops to make such a strategy work. This strategy has seen a rise in the number of rebel weapons caches unearthed, but fighting appears to show that they have not hindered the ability of the rebels, estimated at 2,000 to 5,000, to roam at will through the countryside. Meanwhile, a political solution seems no closer. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, on Friday appointed Stanislav Ilyasov as head of the pro-Moscow Chechen government, giving him the task of creating a civilian administration in a province that has been without government since troops arrived in October 1999. Both sides have so far ruled out compromise. Russia refused to consider giving the rebels independence. The rebels refuse to hold talks about anything less, and no outside authority has yet offered to convene peace talks. Russian troops are continuing search operations for the US aid worker, Kenneth Gluck, kidnapped in the province earlier this month.There has been no public declaration of what has happened to Mr Gluck, who was the head of the Chechen mission for the international medical aid group Médecins Sans Frontières. END |