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Ivanov: Russia faces invisible enemy in Chechnya
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said that Russia was facing an invisible enemy in the face of Chechen rebels and urged the country to look out for future attacks in a rare admission the five year war was not going according to plan.
"We are facing a very serious force -- they are well organized ... and are receiving strong financial help" from abroad, Ivanov told NTV television in a pre-recorded interview.
One of the closest allies of President Vladimir Putin -- and a former KGB agent who followed in the secret service footsteps of the Kremlin chief, Ivanov admitted in rare candid remarks that Russians must realize that they are in a state of war.
Echoing other top officials, Ivanov said Russia was coming under attack from what he alleged were international terror networks and that people must take precaution as they go about their daily business.
He offered no direct path to safety, but his comments underlined the difficulties Russia faced in a guerrilla war that has now reached a new stage, with attacks against civilians killing over 400 people, including some 150 children, in the past month.
Most died in a school in Beslan, near Chechnya, and two nearly simultaneous explosions on board Russian jets headed from Moscow to Russia's south that officials link to Chechen female suicide bombers.
"Our society is not yet ready to deal with such attacks," said Ivanov.
Speaking to an NTV reporter while sipping orange juice at a table laden with fruit, Ivanov said that "we need to change the peoples' perspective" to prepare them for other possible strikes on Russian targets linked to the conflict.
But Ivanov also pressed the Kremlin line, saying the rebels were fighting because they were getting paid from abroad by international terror networks, a battle that had nothing to do with the region's claim for independence from Moscow.
He said the rebels were not driven by a political or religious ideology, nor striking back in revenge at the deaths and kidnappings of civilians at the hands of Russian troops in the war. Guerrillas cite this as the main cause in their attacks.
"Most people are not fighting in the name of ideology. They are fighting for money," Ivanov said.
Yet in a rare admission, Ivanov said Russia had limited intelligence about the rebel forces in the north Caucasus republic, and that this was his ministry's main concern now.
"Without proper intelligence, it is impossible to defeat this invisible foe," Ivanov said.
"There are not many of them -- not at all. But the most important thing is that they are well organized and well financed."
Meanwhile the rebels struck back with their own information campaign, a rebel Internet site saying Sunday that 42,000 Chechen children have been killed during a decade of war in the predominantly Muslim republic, a claim that is impossible to confirm.
The rebel site, identified as the "analytical center" for former Chechen president and current guerrilla leader Aslan Maskhadov, ran photos of corpses of several children that it said confirmed that Putin was overseeing a "criminal regime."
Although the death of 339 children, parents, and school teachers in Beslan has led to a major overhaul in the regional North Ossetian administration, it had no repercussion on officials in Moscow so far.
North Ossetian President Alexander Dzasokhov, who has been severely criticized for his handling of the three-day long drama, sacked his entire government on Thursday but has refused to step down himself. Local residents have been particularly angered at how the heavily armed militants were able to get into the republic from Chechnya, and from there into the school without being stopped by authorities. More than a week after the event, the circumstances of the hostage-taking, the ensuing negotiations and the final assault remain shrouded in obscurity, with the upper house of parliament leading a public investigation. |
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