The collapse of the empire

The Chechen war ended in a shameful defeat for Moscow, and none of those who started it stood trial for the tens of thousands of 18-year-old Russian recruits who were driven by the generals to “take Grozny” and whose bodies, burnt and mutilated, were found on January 1, 1995 paved streets and squares of the Chechen capital.

No one was ready to be tried by a tribunal for crimes against humanity, the so-called “cleansing” of Samashok, when by order of the general
brave Russian contractors shot the entire male population of the village, including babies, for “carpet” bombing (including needle bombs), for “point” rocket-bomb attacks (when the “point” target was a funeral or market people). Unpunished evil breeds a hundred times more, because it does not happen that on one side they go with bombs, and on the other – with flowers. During the war, Chechen militants promised that not a single destroyed village, not a single death would go unaccounted for, they said they had lists of pilots who bombed Chechen towns and villages. But there were no compensatory actions. Budyonivsk is not a terrorist attack, but a military operation on enemy territory, during which civilians were taken hostage, and it was a forced action, instigated by the Russian leadership, which, unfortunately, only recognizes such actions.
They did not want to reckon with the will of Ichkeria to be an independent state, and had to give way to the adequate Russian methods of Shamil Basayev’s militants.

Sooner or later, the Caucasus will leave the Russian Federation, the leadership of which should have accepted this as a historical inevitability, and not bomb Chechen cities and villages, where militants fighting in Dagestan are allegedly stationed. Maybe by design Kremlin imitators from the government, missile and bomb attacks on Chechnya and should have provoked retaliatory terrorist attacks in Russian cities: a great opportunity to introduce a state of emergency on the eve of parliamentary elections, postpone presidential elections and introduce a kind of regency institution – when under an incapacitated president, his duties in the conditions of a dictatorship, the prime minister performs.

It is not known whether the calculations of the Russian ruling elite were justified.

It is quite possible that the origin of sabotage is native, not Caucasian.

At least neither Basayev nor Hottab took responsibility for the terrorist attacks in Moscow and Volgodonsk, and there is no doubt that they would have done so if they had been involved in the explosions.

The Russian special services, which persistently searched for the “Chechen trace”, did not find it, but they cleaned the basements (where they even came across bags with explosives that had been lying in the warehouse for five years as “abandoned”) and achieved mass psychosis of the population, which, without relying on the authorities, single-handedly tracks down criminals and reports each suspect to the police, fearfully waiting for dusk.

When your house can be blown up every night, you are unlikely to be worried about the billions of dollars in the accounts of the president’s “family” in foreign banks. But so that everyone forgets about them and does not call the Kremlin a loud “-gate”, a large-scale action is needed, for example, a war in the North Caucasus. The international situation also contributes to this: after Kosovo, Washington will be “loudly silent” about Russia’s “internal affairs”, even if it tries to wipe Ichkeria off the face of the earth, besides, “Islamic extremists” do not arouse sympathy from Americans. Moscow conducts information war and formation of public opinion against “Islamists” in general and Chechens in particular, more successfully than in 1994 – on the eve of the Russian-Chechen war. In part, she is “helped” by Chechens (not without a bastard in the family) who are engaged in a cruel business – human trafficking.

True, Russian officers serving in the Caucasus successfully work under their brand (according to NTV), but the image of a fearless and noble Chechen warrior is tarnished by the dirty business of a renegade.

In addition, in the information space, the voice of Movladi Udugov, the former Chechen minister of information, who once won a brilliant victory over Moscow on the air, is sorely lacking. Meanwhile, the Russian electronic media tirelessly bombard TV viewers with hatred for foreigners, especially for people of “Caucasian nationality”, whose fingerprints are taken by the police (everyone without exception) and taken for dactyloscopic analysis, exploiting such concepts as are incomprehensible to the majority of ordinary citizens as “Wahhabism, Islamic extremism”, the “stronghold” of which the Russian special services were looking for and found… in Naberezhny Chuvny among the students of the local Islamic school-madrasah, who supposedly replenish the ranks of Chechen militants.

Chechnya has been declared a hotbed of international terrorism, in the fight against which Russia has decided not to neglect any methods. The zeal of the propagandists and ideologues of the new war took over the world and resulted in the obvious, at the state level, inciting international enmity and anti-Muslim sentiments, defaming Islam as a religion on such a scale that even the leader of the Yabluko party Hryhoriy Yavl, a supporter of the harsh methods of “appeasement” in Chechnya insky believed it is necessary to appeal to the authorities to stop inciting enmity based on national and religious principles.

Meanwhile, Moscow announced a triumphant victory over terrorists in Dagestan. In fact, the Russian military showed complete incompetence there: they launched rocket-bomb attacks on their own bases, completely destroyed Dagestani villages, killed civilians, were afraid to enter the mountains, that is, according to a Russian officer, they were barely able to defend themselves, what an offensive there.
The fighters went to the mountains – that’s all the victorious triumph.

But the goal remains the goal, and that is not why the Russian generals pulled the 58th Army, internal troops, and air force to the borders of Ichkeria in order to leave in peace. “We are obliged to strangle the wretch at the root,” said the new Russian prime minister, personnel security officer V. Putin, answering a journalist’s question whether it would be wiser to recognize the independence of Chechnya de jure. They spoke to Dzhokhargalla (Grozny) in the language of ultimatums, they say, give us your terrorists, the list of which, of course, was headed by Shamil Basayev. The Chechens did not remain in debt and asked the Russians to hand over to them the criminals who raised terrorism to the rank of state policy and committed genocide against the people of Ichkeria – the list was headed by the first persons in the Russian power and power structures. So what?

The terrorist attack against Dzhokhar Dudayev was committed by the special services of the Russian Federation on the order of the Kremlin, which, by the way, does not deny its involvement in the murder. Of course, the criminals should be tried in Ichkeria, and the demand to extradite them in the mouth of the Chechens sounds quite logical. However, Moscow took it as a mockery. And she was offended.

A war that is not wanted not only by the Chechens, but also by those Russian soldiers who have already fought in Ichkeria and are able to compare the combat capability of its formations with the disorder of the Russian power structures, this war has already begun. The tactics of its preparation and management were formulated by the same Putin, speaking on Russian television. He emphasized that the signing of the 1996 Khasavyurt peace accords between Russia and Chechnya was a mistake, therefore, Moscow does not recognize any obligations. (Obviously, those signed by Yeltsin and Maskhadov in May 1997).

If peace agreements are cancelled, then war has been declared, and the spokesman for such a decision was the person who they intend to put in the presidential chair after Yeltsin.

Russia, Putin said, has no intention of introducing troops into Chechnya “as it was on December 11, 1994.” Military operations will develop according to a different scheme. Along the border with Chechnya, which is approximately 650 kilometers, Russia creates a “sanitary zone”, that is, isolates Ichkeria from the world. Russian divisions are concentrated on its borders with Ingushetia, Stavropol and Dagestan, in the Sunzhinsky district they have already invaded the territory of Chechnya – at least this is what its official circles claim. Ground operations in Russia’s plans are obviously planned for later. Now, for according to Putin, preventive missile and bomb strikes are carried out on militant bases, artillery and flamethrowers are used. For at least five days, Moscow officially reports where, how many and how they bombed, even names the number of “bandits” who died from bombs and shells, but is silent about women and children.

Illiterates do not work in the Russian propaganda system, so it is surprising who the information “chewing gum” is intended for, that by covering with missile strikes the largest cities after the capital, Gudermes, Urus-Martan, Vedeno, the Russians are allegedly destroying “terrorist bases”. After all, even children know that mobile, small detachments of militants are by no means stationed in city squares and stadiums, their bases are by no means in urban areas. And Russia, as it did four years ago, uses the same tactics — by carrying out airstrikes on the places of the greatest concentration of people, for example, on densely populated cities, towns, hospitals, maternity homes, schools, funeral processions, it seeks, according to Putin, “to strangle the abomination on the root”, that is, to destroy the Chechens physically. It seems that the Russians intend to bring their army into Chechnya only after using scorched earth tactics, when everything burns to the ground. Will the Chechens humbly wait for such a fate? Of course not. Logically, they will move the theater of operations to enemy territory, because only such adequate actions will force the Kremlin and the new players to leave the Caucasus.

The citizens of Russia do not need to look for an external enemy, the cause of their current troubles is domestic politics. This is a crisis of power. And the collapse of the empire.

Maria Bazelyuk, 1999