Call in the spetsnaz...

[alexpgp]

The morning's news says the situation in Moscow has been resolved. The theater where 700 hostages had been kept for two days by about 40 Chechen terrorists was stormed by Russian special forces (spetsnaz).

News reports indicate that the official version of the storm involved the use of stun grenades, though several reports say that troops entered the building wearing gas masks and that, afterward, a number of hostages were sent to hospitals suffering from some form of chemical poisoning. One report suggested that psychoactive gas was used in the assault. Somewhere between 35 and 42 terrorists are reported as having been killed in the action, and 67 of more than 700 hostages died.

grani.ru reports the following:

Депутат Госдумы Сергей Ковалев считает, что "поспешность операции (по освобождению заложников в Москве. - Ред.) определялась тем, что слишком сильны стали требования о мире в Чечне", сообщает "МК-Новости".

Ковалев подчеркнул, что достаточно многих сведений о происшедшем не хватает, а в том, что сообщают, возможно, довольно много лжи. "Единственное, что я могу сказать, - власти, принявшие решение, имели другую таблицу приоритетов, чем можно было ожидать. Главным приоритетом не была жизнь заложников", - сообщил он.

* * *Duma member Sergei Kovalev thinks that the "haste of the operation [to free the hostages in Moscow - Ed.] was driven by the fact that calls for peace in Chechnya had become too strong," reports MK-Novosti.

Kovalev stressed that a rather large amount of information about what happened is lacking, and that is is possible there are quite a few lies in what is being reported. "The only thing I can say is that the authorities who made this decision had a different set of priorities than one might have expected them to have. The main priority was not the lives of the hostages," he said.

Unfortunately, I have no idea what role - other than member of the Duma - Mr. Kovalev plays, so I am at a loss to assess his statements. That the lives of the hostages may not have been the main priority in the storm is something I don't find inconceivable. As far as the crack about lies being reported, well... based on my experience reading the Russian media on the internet, it's not as if this kind of thing is something new. I pity anyone who takes what the Russian media dishes out at face value, because such persons are among the most misinformed people in the world (if you don't count CNN viewers, but I digress...).

The hostages aren't clear yet, either. They are being systematically screened - including the ones in serious and critical condition in the hospital, if I understood the report correctly - to make sure there are no disguised terrorists among them. I suspect life will also get a lot harder for people of Chechen-like appearance who show their faces in Moscow.

Cheers...

Comments

[svenska.livejournal.com]

I always considered Sergey Kovalev to be an old vegetable ("старый маразматик"). I have been convinced of that once again. I believe I'm not the only Russian with such an opinion.
The old vegetable - here it is not a usual insult, this is my opinion of him as a man. It does not mean he is not right. Maybe he is right. Maybe he is absolutely right. But I trust him in the amount of 0.1% because he is an...

I have just listened to an interview with Nemtsov on TV. He is also not very popular, because he always has his own opinion that quite often doesn't correspond with the President's and the "people's" opinion. But that means it is possible for me to trust him. He can be mistaken, but personally I can trust him of 90%.

He carried on negotiations with these terrorists. In brief, his conclusions: 1) all of them are "small pawns". They were managed by Basayev and Maskhadov. They wanted Putin to address himself to them (B&M) in order to negotiate. But Putin has not done that. 2) Therefore, the situation considerably worsened last night...

And here's Sergey Kovalev's opinion... An old v...

[silpol.livejournal.com]

Alex, could you help me? I'm wondering what is so special with BBC and many US news - they didn't change a wording of their texts and named those criminals as "rebels". My question is rather linguistical - is it meaning of word "rebel" so broad (and my understanding was wrong) or it is intensional slap-in-russian-faces (and it is time to give to follow English news)? I'm not kidding, I'm damn serious...

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

What's so "special" about them? The word combination "дебильные кретины" comes to mind when thinking of journalists, but I don't think it's anything special directed at Russians.

My favorite journalistic formulation (Reuters comes to mind, here) is "alleged terrorist," used to refer to the September 11 hijackers. Some other journalists have gone on record to avoid referring to al Qaeda operatives as "terrorists" (at least, after the initial reaction to September 11 died down), on the basis of some ill-conceived notion of "not wanting to take sides." If you ever hear some talking head on the television say something like "Well, you know... one person's 'terrorist' is another person's 'freedom fighter'," you're listening to a specimen of the species.

Technically, I suppose, the word "rebel" could be applied to the Chechens. It has the same approximate flavor of, say, Fidel Castro's "rebels" operating in the hills against the forces of Batista. Depending on how cynical you are, the word "rebel" may describe the Chechens, or it may not. Do "rebels" kill innocent civilians? In modern times, increasingly, the answer is yes. Is it the result of a change in rebel tactics or because the word is being used to describe a different type of person? I can't say for sure.

I don't know if I've answered your question. Did I?

Cheers...