January 23, 2001   

This Date's Issues:   5044 • 5045 • 5046

Johnsons's Russia List
#5046
23 January 2001
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. Bloomberg: Putin Said to Support Turner Plan to Buy NTV Stake, Agency Says.
2. The Guardian (UK): Ian Traynor, Bush faces a different Russia. The new US president must find a new way of dealing with Moscow.
3. Reuters: Swiss deal blow to Borodin, lawyers pledge fight.
4. Moscow Times editorial: It's Time to Engage, Not To Confront. (re human rights)
5. Financial Times (UK): Good neighbour or great-power politics? Charles Clover assesses an increasingly assertive Russia's intentions towards its putative "zone of influence."
6. The Times (UK) editorial: Russia's Europe. The EU, not Nato, looks like the advancing army.
7. Reuters: Russia may end curbs on foreign banks - finmin.
8. Los Angeles Times: John Daniszewski, Chechen Leader-in-Hiding Won't Give Up the Fight. Caucasus: Moscow sees the war as winding down, but republic's president is gearing up for combat.
9. BBC Monitoring: Pro-Chechen web site ridicules Putin's plans for future operations in Chechnya.
10. Parlamentskaya Gazeta: RUSSIA INTENDS TO DEVELOP DIALOGUE WITH NATO IN 21ST CENTURY. (Interview with defense minister Igor SERGEYEV)] 

******

#1
Putin Said to Support Turner Plan to Buy NTV Stake, Agency Says
 
Moscow, Jan. 23 (Bloomberg)
-- Russian President Vladimir Putin may support CNN founder Ted Turner's
proposed purchase of a stake in NTV, the country's largest private television
station, said Boris Gryzlov, leader of the Unity faction, Interfax said.

``The president clearly stated that, if Turner wants to purchase NTV shares,
this would be very good,'' said Gryzlov, Interfax reported.

Gryzlov, who leads the pro-Putin Unity faction in the lower house of
parliament, the Duma, discussed the matter yesterday when he met with the
president and Emergency Minister Sergei Shoigu to discuss the party's
strategy in the spring session of parliament that began Monday, he said,
Interfax reported.

Turner and a group of investors are ready to spend more than $300 million for
a stake in NTV-owner Media Most, Russia's biggest private media company, if
Putin guarantees its independence, Media Most said last week.

Unity is the second-largest party in the 450-member Duma, boosted by Putin's
backing during the December 1999 elections. With Shoigu -- who declined to
take a seat in parliament -- at the top of its ticket, Unity won about a
quarter of the vote at the elections, gaining 84 seats. The Communist Party
won slightly more votes than Unity, and holds 86 seats.

******

#2
The Guardian (UK)
23 January 2001
Bush faces a different Russia
The new US president must find a new way of dealing with Moscow, writes Ian
Traynor in Moscow (ian.traynor@guardian.co.uk)

The Russia that Bill Clinton has just put behind him is a very different
proposition from the country that he inherited from George W Bush's father,
and while Washington has been agonising over the past two years about ''Who
lost Russia?'', there is no doubt that US-Russian relations are at a much
lower ebb in 2001 than they were in the heady, optimistic days of 1993 when
Bill Clinton entered the White House and Boris Yeltsin was in his
iconoclastic prime.

Eight years on from Clinton's project to steer Russia towards democracy and
free markets - an often fitful, hesitant and confused policy - Russia is
under a new, younger and very different leadership from the Yeltsin clan.

Hugely popular and more vigorous, President Vladimir Putin is also displaying
authoritarian instincts. Fears for freedom of the press and of religion are
rife. The economy is growing due to high oil prices, but mired in corruption
with capital fleeing the country at alarming rates, while inward investment
is minimal.

A recent assessment by the CIA bleakly forecast unremitting decline on all
fronts in Russia despite Putin's pledges to restore Russian greatness and
international clout.

''Between now and 2015, Moscow will be challenged even more than today to
adjust its expectations for world leadership to its dramatically reduced
resources,'' the CIA study predicted. ''Whether the country can make the
transition in adjusting ends to means remains an open and critical question,
according to most experts, as does the question of the character and quality
of Russian governance and economic policies. The most likely outcome is a
Russia that remains internally weak.''

If the Putin feel-good factor has made Russians feel better about themselves
in the past year, the romance with the west has soured. Both the government
and wider society bear grudges towards the west, especially America, and are
convinced that the ulterior Clinton motive was not to entrench democracy and
improve the quality of life in Russia, but to keep Russia down, promote its
weakness, and ensure that America remained unchallenged as what Madeleine
Albright has called ''the indispensable power.''

The key geo-strategic moves disenchanting the Russians came in Clinton's
second term with the expansion of Nato into the former Soviet satellites of
Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic and the Nato war against Yugoslavia in
1999 which Russian nationalists insist on seeing as a Pax Americana to be
enforced around the Russian periphery, for example, in Chechnya.

More broadly, the incoming Bush administration as well as Clinton-supporting
Russia experts now dismiss the Clinton era as one of squandered opportunities
as regards Russia.

In a recent book, Princeton professor, Russia expert, and democrat, Stephen
Cohen, describes Clinton's policy on Russia as the biggest American foreign
policy disaster since Vietnam.

In a recent article outlining the views of the new administration,
Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser, declared that ''the
problem for US policy is that the Clinton administration's ongoing embrace of
Yeltsin and those who were thought to be reformers around him quite simply
failed. US support for democracy and economic reform became support for
Yeltsin. His agenda became the American agenda.''

This is the central criticism of Clinton's Russian policy - that it was too
closely identified with the fortunes of Yeltsin rather than concentrating on
building more durable democratic and economic institutions and structures.
The German chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, directed the same criticism at his
predecessor, Helmut Kohl - that policy towards Russia in the 90s was
over-concentrated on male-bonding leaders, the chumminess of the Bill 'n'
Boris act or the Boris and Helmut extravaganzas. Tony Blair appears to be
trying to recreate this kind of relationship with Putin.

The American anthropologist, Janine Wedel, in various books and articles, has
analysed in devastating detail how US policy through the 90s was hijacked by
a small and unaccountable clique of Russian and American economic liberals
grouped around Anatoliy Chubais in Russia and free market economists at
Harvard.

The result was unwavering Washington support for a clique which pushed
through shock therapy and mass privatisation with questionable results. The
entire edifice of economic reform then degenerated further into hugely
corrupt sell-offs of national industry at knockdown prices to a small clique
of favoured businessmen in return for their support of the Yeltsin Kremlin.

The outcome now is that in Russia, Chubais and the so-called oligarchs are
the most reviled figures in Russia, making it popular for Putin to take
politically motivated potshots at those of the oligarchs who incur his
disfavour, while in America the aid gravy train is grinding to a halt and
Russia fatigue has set in.

''[Clinton's] America certified that reform was taking place in Russia where
it was not,'' argued Ms Rice. ''The realities in Russia simply did not accord
with the administration's script about Russian economic reform.''

''Many Russian futures are possible, ranging from political resurgence to
dissolution,'' the CIA predicts. ''The general drift, however, is toward
authoritarianism, although not to the extreme extent of the Soviet period ...
[Russia's] domestic ills will frustrate its efforts to reclaim its great
power status.''

Despite Clinton's efforts and notwithstanding Putin's central promises to
Russia, the Bush administration finds itself dealing with an ever weaker
Russia. The fear is that weakness could be a bigger problem than a healthy,
happy Russia.

Email
ian.traynor@guardian.co.uk

******

#3
Swiss deal blow to Borodin, lawyers pledge fight
 
MOSCOW, Jan 23 (Reuters) - Swiss prosecutors dealt a setback to former
Kremlin aide Pavel Borodin on Tuesday by refusing to withdraw the warrant
that caused his arrest in New York.

Borodin's lawyers pledged to fight "on all fronts" for his release from a New
York jail cell, where he has been held since last week. More moral support
came from Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko and top Russian
politician Boris Gryzlov.

Geneva prosecutor Bernard Bertossa inflicted the blow on Borodin's hopes for
a quick release by rejecting a Russian suggestion that he withdraw the
warrant if Borodin agreed to be questioned in a money-laundering inquiry.

"If there is no arrest warrant and no extradition request for Mr Borodin,
then he is free to do as he wants. The Russian authorities have no legal
means to force him to come to Geneva. For this reason we cannot accept the
proposal," Bertossa told Reuters in Switzerland.

Swiss investigators suspect Borodin, the former head of the Kremlin's
property empire, and other officials of accepting bribes from two Swiss-based
construction firms in return for awarding them lucrative refurbishment
contracts.

Borodin and the firms, Mabetex and Mercata, deny wrongdoing.

One of Borodin's lawyers said he and others were using every type of
diplomatic and legal pressure to get Borodin freed at a court hearing due to
be held on January 25.

He noted that the Russian Foreign Ministry and Russian ambassador in the
United States had become involved.

"In general, pressure is being applied on all fronts and we hope it will lead
to success," Borodin's U.S. lawyer, Alex Fishkin, was quoted by Russia's
Kommersant daily as saying.

Borodin is currently one of the heads of a committee which is helping manage
preparations for a Russian-Belarussian union.

Lukashenko, who last week sharply criticised Borodin's arrest, said after
arriving in Moscow on Tuesday that he continued to defend the former Kremlin
aide.

"Borodin is a civil servant of our union and I, as chairman, as head of a
senior state council, am duty-bound to support this man, duty-bound,"
Lukashenko said in televised remarks.

At the same time, Lukashenko said he would not oppose Russia if it wanted to
replace Borodin, as this was Moscow's right.

Gryzlov, head of a parliamentary faction which is close to President Vladimir
Putin, said the Kremlin chief backed Borodin.

"I am sure the president will do everything possible for his release,"
Gryzlov was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying.

*******

#4
Moscow Times
January 23, 2001
Editorial
It's Time to Engage, Not To Confront

Last weekend more than 1,000 political figures and civic activists gathered
for a two-day Emergency Congress in Defense of Human Rights.

Sponsored by the Yabloko political faction and a number of other groups,
the congress was convened to draw attention to a number of serious human
rights issues that have emerged over the last year or so.

Activists were particularly concerned by the continued campaign in
Chechnya, Kremlin proposals concerning political parties, freedom of the
press and Kremlin-sponsored revisions to the Labor Code. When you add all
these ominous signs up, they contend, the result is a clear threat to civil
liberties and the Constitution. Human Rights Commissioner Oleg Mironov told
the congress, "The situation with human rights today evokes alarm and
concern and can be characterized as unsatisfactory."

Obviously, we share these concerns. We have written in this space about
each of these issues, urging the Kremlin to temper its drive to reassert
central control with a heavy dose of concern for human rights and basic
human liberties. We have lamented steps that seem intended to minimize
public participation in civic life, and we have urged President Vladimir
Putin to adopt an inclusive and open approach to political and economic
reform.

However, we are concerned with the tone that some congress participants
adopted. Now is simply not the time to draw sharp battle lines. Putin's
administration is at least as open to engagement as was that of former
President Boris Yeltsin, and it continues - in words at least - to support
the Constitution, the rule of law and even human rights. Liberals should
exploit every avenue for positively influencing policy by pressuring from
within to bring the Kremlin's deeds into line with its stated goals.

We do not believe that declaring a "human rights state of emergency" is a
responsible reaction to the present situation. Such rhetoric merely deepens
the divide between the government and liberal forces in society, provoking
confrontation rather than facilitating a dialogue that could lead to real
improvements. It gives the government every excuse to ignore the views of
liberals, and it gives liberals every excuse for refraining from the hard
work of constructively developing and lobbying proposals to advance the
interests of citizens.

Taken literally, a "human rights state of emergency" is virtually a
declaration of war by activists against the state. Given the strength of
the state today and the weakness of civil society, it is a foregone
conclusion how such a war would end if Putin picks up the gauntlet.

*******

#5
Financial Times (UK)
23 January 2001
Putin: good neighbour or great-power politics?: Charles Clover
assesses an increasingly assertive Russia's intentions towards its putative
"zone of influence"
By CHARLES CLOVER

A marked change in Russia's relations with other former Soviet states over
the past few months has left diplomats, analysts, and above all, Russia's
neighbours wondering how far President Vladimir Putin plans to take an
increasingly assertive foreign policy.

This month Russian companies temporarily cut off natural gas supplies to
Ukraine and Georgia to force payment of debts, signs of an increasingly
harder Russian line on this chronic issue. And last week, Russia and Ukraine
signed a defence co-operation agreement drastically increasing the
integration of their respective militaries, and putting Ukraine's previously
close co-operation with Nato into question.

That comes on the heels of a year in which Russia halted plans to withdraw
its military from Moldova and Georgia, imposed a visa regime on Georgia and
speeded up the process of unifying with Belarus. It also created a collective
security organisation known as "Eurasian Nato" with several central Asian
states, and declared the Caspian Sea and its oil resources "of strategic
interest".

For some analysts - including former high-ranking Russian diplomats - this
amounts to a declaration of a new sphere of influence, which goes back to
19th century great-power politics. Others say Moscow is only practising an
updated version of Washington's "Good Neighbour" policy which promoted US
corporate expansion into Latin America in the 1930s.

Mr Putin was characteristically vague about Russia's intentions in a
statement on foreign policy made just before the new year. He said: "We must
get rid of imperial ambitions on the one hand, but on the other clearly
understand where our national interests are, to spell them out and fight for
them."

Stephen Sestanovich, the US state department's special representative to the
Newly Independent States, said: "I think any American administration would
welcome the first part of (Mr Putin's) statement, and ask what the second
part means.

"I think it's fair to say that over the past year there has been a strong
concern about whether a new definition of Russian national interests and new
approach to defending them is taking hold," he said.

Perhaps the clearest expression of Moscow's new line in the former Soviet
Union came at a meeting in November of the Organisa tion for Security and
Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). Yevgeny Gusarov, Russian deputy foreign
minister, made it clear that Russia was now opposed to western interference
in the affairs of the former Soviet republics.

"We have been warning our western partners that we oppose the use of the OSCE
for interference in the internal affairs of the countries situated to the
east of Vienna. This time we are sending a clear signal: we won't allow this
to happen," said Mr Gusarov. His remarks were part of a broader message that
the OSCE should not confine itself to focusing on the post-

Soviet region but should instead have a broader mandate.

Observers of the meeting said though, that Mr Gusarov made clear Russia was
rethinking plans to withdraw its military from Georgia, though it closed two
bases there on schedule at the end of last year. Western defence analysts say
Russia is also in breach of commitments to withdraw its military from Moldova
by 2002, though Russian officials dispute this.

Andrei Federov, former first deputy foreign minister and now director of
political projects at the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, an
influential Moscow think-tank, said: "Today we are speaking more or less
openly now about our zone of interests. In one way or another we are
confirming that the post-Soviet territory is such a zone.

"In Yeltsin's time we were trying to wrap this in a nice paper. Now we are
saying it more directly: this is our territory, our sphere of interest," he
said.

Officials in Ukraine, the largest and most powerful of the post-Soviet states
after Russia, have noticed a decisive change in the Kremlin's attitude,
though senior Ukrainian officials are reluctant to discuss their private
impressions of the new Russian line on the record.

Recently, Russia has been taking an unprecedented hard line on the issue of
Ukraine's chronic energy debts, trying to turn it into leverage in Ukraine's
privatisation programme. For instance, Viktor Sorokin, head of the Ukraine
department at Russia's ministry of foreign affairs, said that Russia was
seeking to convert a Dollars 2.2bn gas debt into bonds which could convert
into shares in Ukrainian state enterprises.

Russia is especially interested in gaining control of Ukraine's gas pipeline
system, which transports Russian gas exports to Europe.

On the defence front, the agreement Ukraine signed last week with Russia,
which appears to give Russia a hand in planning any foreign military
exercises on Ukrainian soil, undercuts Ukrainian military co-operation
agreements with Nato signed in 1997 and 1998. Ukraine and Russia will also
form a joint naval unit, and expand weapons production.

With Ukraine shut out of membership of the European Union in the foreseeable
future, many local analysts are saying that turning towards Russia is the
only rational choice, as Ukraine's economy remains deeply dependent on trade.

Last October, Leonid Kuchma, Ukraine's president, sought to allay any fears
that a Ukraine-Russia partnership would be the basis for a rebuilding of the
Soviet Union: "We should not be afraid of Russia, that they are trying to
recreate their empire." Ukraine will not have to join any sort of union," he
said.

*******

#6
The Times (UK)
23 January 2001
Editorial
Russia's Europe 
The EU, not Nato, looks like the advancing army
 
People in Russia, as Chris Patten acknowledged last week, "have difficulty
in understanding what the European Union is and what it wants to be". That
is hardly surprising; most Europeans are equally in the dark. But it is
potentially dangerous for Moscow to be confused. The closer the EU marches
towards Russian frontiers - and it is as a march that Russians see it - the
more vital it is for the EU to bring clarity and consistency to the
relationship.

The EU has made a poor fist of both. How is Moscow to distinguish between
the "superstate" that, Mr Patten insists, is not on the cards, and the EU
"superpower" invoked by Tony Blair last autumn? How is it to interpret
assurances from Brussels that the EU is not competing "for political or
ideological influence", when the EU's official Agenda 2000 declares that
enlargement will extend a "guarantee of an increased stabilising influence"
over Europe, "complementing that achieved through the enlargement of Nato"?
That parallel will look decidedly threatening to Russia once Poland and
Lithuania join. Kaliningrad, the former Königsberg, capital of East
Prussia, which since 1945 has been the highly sensitive headquarters of the
Russian Baltic Fleet, will then be entirely surrounded, a Russian enclave
as isolated from Russia as was West Berlin from the rest of Germany in the
Cold War.

Before then, the EU must win back Russian trust. Until the mid-1990s,
Moscow drew a clear distinction between Nato enlargement, which it opposed,
and the eastward growth of the EU, which it saw as economic and therefore
benign. It no longer does; that was bound to be a malign consequence of the
EU's assertion of military power. The EU must allay suspicion in Moscow
that it is exploiting Russian weakness to effect a political redivision of
Europe, a Yalta-in-reverse that leaves Russia, in the words of Ivan Ivanov,
the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, "without a 'residence permit' on the
edge of the continent".

Unlike Nato, which has its Partnerships for Peace, the EU has made little
effort to blur the divide between members and outsiders. Its "co-operation
agreement" with Russia is a dead letter. Excessive bureaucracy has made it,
in the words of a Brussels official, "a triumph of process over substance".
The Scandinavians, alert to the perils of a paranoid Russia, have been
trying to give the EU a "northern dimension". They have had little success.

The EU needs one badly. EU enlargement looks to Moscow like the progress of
a steamroller. Brussels pushes before it a massive wall of regulation which
all new members must accept. This not only erects trade barriers; it
sharply restricts the movement of people as well as goods across the new
"external frontier". This paper wall increases the risk that not only the
Central Europeans but the Baltic states, with their large Russian
minorities, will turn their back on Russia after accession, politically as
well as economically. Kaliningrad, like Danzig before 1939, could then
become a dangerous source of friction. Well before this Russian base is
encircled, that prospect must be made unthreatening to Russian interests.
It will not be easy.

This wretched place, about the size of Ulster, is badly administered, poor,
disease-ridden, and polluted. Its earnings come largely from
drug-trafficking, smuggling, organised crime - and petty trading which
would be crushed if EU visa controls were introduced. Closed to foreigners
in Soviet days because of its importance as Moscow's warm-water base, it
still houses around 18,000 Russian servicemen and the rotting remnants of a
once-mighty fleet. It is supplied via a corridor across Lithuania - access
that Russia understandably wants the EU to guarantee. It seeks special
status for Kaliningrad - and, to underscore its anxiety about encirclement,
has redeployed nuclear missiles there. The EU is entitled to demand that
Russia clean up crime there as the price of a deal. But a deal there must be.
 
*******

#7
Russia may end curbs on foreign banks - finmin

MOSCOW, Jan 23 (Reuters) - Russia could lift restrictions on foreign bank
operations on the domestic market to ease the country's entry into the World
Trade Organisation, First Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Ulyukayev said on
Tuesday.

Ulyukayev said liberalisation of Russia's insurance and banking sectors was a
key issue in talks with the WTO.

"It is possible...that in the course of these negotiations we can end
restrictions on foreign banks' entry onto the Russian market. This could be a
serious concession on our part," Ulyukayev told a banking conference.

The WTO insists that Russia must throw open its banking sector for foreign
capital. Russia promised last month it would make new offers on opening its
vast market for goods and services in February.

Vladislav Metnev, a banking analyst at Aton brokerage, said, however, that in
practice the 12 percent legal limit on foreign bank capital on the Russian
market was no longer strictly observed by the central bank.

"The limit on the presence of foreign banks in Russia is not this
restriction, it is the prospects for the Russian market," Metnev said, adding
that the retail sector was already crowded and the number of creditworthy
businesses was small.

Matthias Varing, chief coordinator for the Dresdner Bank <DRSDn.DE> group in
Russia, said in a Tuesday interview with the Vedomosti daily that
registration of foreign banks in Russia had become a "normal process."

But Varing said their entry would not become a "decisive" factor on the
Russian market.

"I don't exclude that in the coming years, other foreign banks will appear
here, for example from Spain and Italy," Varing said. "This is normal
economic development, but I don't think it will be decisive for the
development of Russian banks."

Ulyukayev said the Russian government was taking an inventory of the banks in
which it held stakes. It is considering its exit from those banks where it
holds less than 25 percent and reviewing its ownership in banks where it owns
a larger stake.

"We will review the issue of the banks where our stake is more," he added.

The central bank has said the government has financial interests in more than
400 banks.

Ulyukayev said state-owned banks should serve private retail clients, because
Russia lacked a law enshrining state guarantees for private deposits, as well
as state foreign trade operations and exporters.

He said state-controlled banks should also help finance investment projects
that were unattractive to commercial banks.

"Everything else is reserved for commercial banks," Ulyukayev said.

*******

#8
Los Angeles Times
January 23, 2001
Chechen Leader-in-Hiding Won't Give Up the Fight
Caucasus: Moscow sees the war as winding down, but republic's president is
gearing up for combat.
By JOHN DANISZEWSKI, Times Staff Writer

    GROZNY, Russia--Since he was chased out of this capital by Russian
artillery a year ago, Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov has been a hunted
man, hiding out in the southern mountains of his rebellious republic.
     To Moscow, which deposed his government and imposed federal control over
most of Chechnya, he is a bandit and a terrorist. But tens of thousands of
Russian troops in the republic have been unable to extinguish his much
smaller band of determined fighters. And Maskhadov, a former Soviet military
officer who was elected president in 1997, remains defiant.
     In a rare communication to a Western newspaper from his mountain
hide-out, Maskhadov--responding on audiotape to written questions from The
Times--predicted this month that his forces will deal Moscow a humiliating
defeat in Chechnya.
     Saying his loyalists were fighting with "extreme hatred" against
"barbarism," Maskhadov asserted that Russian forces will suffer the same fate
in Chechnya as the Soviet Red Army did in Afghanistan more than a decade ago.
"Their army will leave this place in shame," he said.
     But Maskhadov said he was also interested in negotiating with Russia for
the sake of the Chechen people.
     Referring to a resolution by the Council of Europe parliamentary
assembly for an immediate cessation of combat and talks without conditions,
Maskhadov said: "We are ready. . . . We are not rejecting contacts. The ball
is in the Russian court."
     By the last official figures, about 2,500 Russian troops had been killed
in Chechnya as of October, and the government has acknowledged that on
average 20 soldiers die each week in hit-and-run attacks, shelling and mine
explosions.
     In Grozny, Russian checkpoints are shot at nightly and gun battles
between the rebels and army and Interior Ministry troops are commonplace. In
a daytime incident earlier this month, Russian soldiers fired on a Chechen
car whose occupants had shot at a checkpoint. All four men inside the vehicle
were killed and a bystander was injured. Yet rebel fighters were seen
brazenly driving near the same spot in suburban Staraya Sunzha three days
later.
     Despite such occurrences, the official Russian position is that the war
is over, the rebels are desperate and all that is needed now is to mop up the
last "ringleaders"--specifically Maskhadov, Chechen rebel leader Shamil
Basayev and the Arab warlord who goes by the name Khattab.
     On Monday, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin went further, announcing
that Russian troop levels will be reduced in Chechnya and that the Federal
Security Service, or FSB, the main successor to the KGB, will take over
command of the "anti-terrorist" operations.
     In a televised appearance on the NTV network, Putin spokesman Sergei V.
Yastrzhembsky said a new phase in the conflict is beginning, with the stress
now being put on the "neutralization--or if you choose, the elimination" of
rebel leaders.
     In the spirit of regarding the war as winding down, Yastrzhembsky
earlier said Russia had ceased issuing regular reports on military
casualties.
     Beslan Gantemirov, the Russian-installed mayor working behind heavy
security barricades in Grozny, said the military campaign has been so
successful that there is absolutely no reason to talk to Maskhadov or his
representatives.
     "Why hold talks with a man who has lost all influence and power?" he
said, according to a report Friday in the newspaper Izvestia.
     Maskhadov, 49, was a Soviet colonel who returned to his native republic
in 1991 to fight for independence under Chechen leader Dzhokar M. Dudayev.
After Dudayev's death in a 1996 missile attack, Maskhadov--then considered
the most moderate candidate--was elected to a four-year term as president in
January 1997 with 59% of the vote. He is expected to drop the title after
this month but continue to call himself commander in chief of the rebel
forces.
     According to a Times representative who met with Maskhadov this month,
the Chechen president appears haggard and weary after his year in hiding. The
meeting was abruptly canceled just after it began because aides believed that
Russian forces were closing in. Maskhadov taped his replies, which were
passed to The Times through the intermediary.
     On his audiotape, Maskhadov spoke calmly and quietly, saying he was
certain that the Russians will be forced to the negotiating table by an
ongoing campaign of small guerrilla attacks designed to wear down and
eventually drive their troops out of Chechnya.
     He charged that Russian forces have committed summary executions of
civilians and that they routinely steal from Chechens: "They have stripped
three skins from these emaciated people." The very harshness of the
occupation is influencing more people to take up arms on the separatists'
side, he said.
     As an example, he claimed that two women who recently lost their
husbands asked to be trained as suicide bombers. Maskhadov said he answered
them: "Go home. Raise your children. Chechnya will find men to avenge their
deaths. . . . But I had a very hard time talking them out of it."
     Chechens won a degree of independence from Moscow as a result of a
bloody 1994-96 war. But Russia invaded Chechnya again in September 1999,
citing both a series of apartment building blasts in Russia that were blamed
on Islamic extremists from Chechnya and an Islamic guerrilla incursion into
the neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan.
     Russian troops, battering their way in with heavy bombing and artillery
attacks, advanced methodically into Chechnya. By last January, Maskhadov was
forced to abandon his capital, which had been bombed and shelled to ruins. On
Feb. 6, the Russian flag was raised over the city center after the rebels had
fled into the mountains.
     Maskhadov defended the performance of his troops in slowing the Russian
advance and said he and his fighters remain unified in what he called the
war's new phase.
     "Today we are engaged in a full-scale guerrilla war. And what does it
mean?" Maskhadov said. "It means that [by] breaking into small, flexible
groups [of] from 10 to 15 men, or even smaller groups, we are rendering
crushing blows on checkpoints, on commandants' offices, on military units.
That is the tactic."
     For now, he said, "the most efficient warfare is operations of small,
flexible groups designed to morally and physically wear out the enemy."
     Maskhadov warned that the guerrillas would be in a favorable position to
step up their attacks if Russian forces follow through on announced plans to
put garrisons in every Chechen town.
     "We have about 300 villages and towns, and--if there will be a garrison
in every settlement--these are good targets for us," he said.
     His moujahedeen already have plans to retake Grozny one day, as they did
successfully during the previous war, Maskhadov said. It will happen, he
said, "if not in a month, then in a year. If not in a year, then in 10
years."
     "A regular army cannot and is not capable of winning a guerrilla war. It
has never happened in history," he said. "They cannot catch a handful of
rebels, even if they deploy 2,000 pieces of hardware in one spot.
     "When a huge army starts to react and turn around, [the guerrillas] are
already 10 miles away, into the army's flanks or the rear, ready to strike
again," he said.
     In their attempts to evade capture, the guerrillas have been aided by
the mountainous terrain in southern Chechnya.
     "We are at home and much better prepared for a winter campaign," he
said. But the Russians, he asserted, are having a hard time operating and
moving about with their heavy equipment. "In this fog, in this dirt and in
this rain, they will kill more of their own troops than our fighters will."
     Nevertheless, Maskhadov seemed pessimistic that the conflict will end
soon.
     "They have staked everything on force, and they cannot bring themselves
to admit that they have achieved nothing and should stop. . . . The young
leader of Russia does not know what to do."

*******

#9
BBC Monitoring
Pro-Chechen web site ridicules Putin's plans for future operations in
Chechnya
Source: Kavkaz-Tsentr web site, in Russian 23 Jan 01

The pro-Chechen Kavkaz-Tsentr web site ridiculed Russian statements about the
war in Chechnya ending and the plans announced by President Vladimir Putin on
22 January to withdraw significant numbers of troops and hand over control of
operations in Chechnya to the Russian Federal Security Service. The web site
said that the Kremlin has announced the end of the war before, but is in fact
powerless to control events in Chechnya. As an example of this, it reported
that fierce fighting took place in the town of Gudermes on 21 January. Russia
attempted to downplay casualties and the seriousness of this fighting, but
failed to do so effectively as spokesmen changed their story too many times.
The following is excerpt from report by Kavkaz-Tsentr news agency web site:

23 January: Putin has decided that the war in the Caucasus has ended. Troops
must be withdrawn. The remaining "fighters" will be finished off by the FSS
[Federal Security Service]. After such a radical interpretation of the
situation, Putin signed a whole pile of orders and decrees which compel the
new "person responsible for Chechnya" [Federal Security Service head Nikolay]
Patrushev to give a report on this having been carried out...[ellipsis as
published] by 15 May. No sooner, no later. That is to say, in three and a
half months' time, peaceful life in Ichkeria [Chechnya] should be in full
swing, with subbotniks [voluntary unpaid work on days off in USSR] and
sowing, the construction of social facilities and all old people being paid
their pensions. After the announcement of the Kremlin's decisions, as befits
such an occasion, bustling [Russian presidential aide Sergey] Yastrzhembskiy,
with his darting eyes, delivered the appropriate commentaries to his master's
instructions, explaining that once the "ringleaders of the fighters" are
wiped out, life in Chechnya will immediately become better. The master of the
Kremlin himself informed the world that [head of pro-Moscow Chechen
administration Akhmad] "Kadyrov's plan" for the restoration of the Chechen
Republic of Ichkeria, with which he acquainted himself a couple of days ago,
really took his fancy, and given that this was the case, he gave the order to
withdraw part of the occupying forces from the territory of the Chechen
Republic of Ichkeria.

The Russian media immediately reported, quoting the Russian General Staff,
that some 70,000-90,000 soldiers are fighting in Chechnya at the moment, and
after the forces are withdrawn, then no more than 22,000 will remain in
Chechnya. This idyll ended with the traditional [Russian Deputy Chief of the
General Staff Valeriy] "Manilov dessert", giving figures for the number of
dead and wounded soldiers among the occupying forces in Chechnya. It would
seem that for "Putin's legitimate undertaking", 2,700 soldiers have laid down
their lives and more than 9,000 have been wounded. At the same time, almost
14,000 "fighters" have been killed. The Chechen side, in turn, continues to
insist that 27,000 occupiers have been killed and at least 60,000 soldiers
have been wounded and states that it does not intend to let Russian
aggressors leave Chechnya alive. To sum up, the war has ended and no more
than 1,000 "fighters" from the "bandits'" ranks are still alive. In future,
the "counter-terrorist operation in Chechnya will be continued with the
accent on other forces and means". Putin wants to attend a victory parade on
15 May... [ellipsis as published]

All that would be fine, but events in Gudermes clearly spoiled the strategies
dreamt up by the Kremlin PR company, which were all intended for Strasbourg,
where the latest PACE [Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe]
session has started. The Chechen mojahedin, as usual, demonstrated a marked
lack of respect for the Kremlin, and from first thing on Monday morning, the
latter had to try to shake off importunate journalists wanting to know about
the fierce fighting which took place in Gudermes on Sunday [21 January].
Initially, the so-called press service of the Combined Group of Forces
reported that one special-purpose policeman had been killed and three had
been wounded "after an eight-hour exchange of fire near the central town
hospital in Gudermes". Then this figure rose to four soldiers who "perished
in an exchange of fire with the `bandits'". A little later, at about 1200
[0900 gmt] on Monday, RIA-Novosti news agency reported that not four but nine
soldiers and special-purpose police officers had been killed. Towards the
evening, Yastrzhembskiy's office gave a final figure of six, putting an end
to the flailing efforts of its information services. Moreover, according to
Yastrzhembskiy, two of them "were killed by stray bullets" in the area near
the hospital where, clearly, armed special-purpose police officers found
themselves "purely by chance", and were not taking part in any battle.

The Chechen side, as has already become traditional in such cases, made
public its own version of the Sunday battle in Gudermes. According to the
Chechen side's information, combined forces of the Chechen mojahedin, made up
of several mobile groups from various different subunits, on Sunday
simultaneously attacked three enemy targets and one so-called enemy
rapid-reaction armoured group. The clash began at about 1200 [0900 gmt] and
lasted until it grew dark in various parts of the town. The Chechen command
reports that at least 20 Russian aggressors and two national-traitors of the
so-called pro-Moscow militia were killed during the fighting. More than a
dozen national traitors were wounded. The mojahedin managed to blow up two
infantry fighting vehicles and burn out an UAZ vehicle. Three occupiers were
killed in a local cafe after a remote-controlled mine was detonated. The
Chechen side also reported that only three mojahedin received minor injuries
during Sunday's battle. The Chechen version of events sounds more plausible,
if only because of the fact that the Chechen side has not changed its story
at all. The Russian side, on the other hand, changed its version of Sunday's
fighting in Gudermes six times in just over three hours. It is also clear
that the Russian side took it very badly that information about the events in
Gudermes was leaked. That is why throughout Monday practically all Russian TV
channels and Internet sites, with only a few exceptions, were busy totally
refuting the Chechen side's reports about the fighting in Gudermes and the
losses among the occupying forces.

Putin has again announced the end of the war in the Caucasus. [Passage
omitted: repetition of idea that this has all been heard before] The problem
is that for a long time now, the situation in the Caucasus has not been
dependent on the wishes or orders of one or another master in the Kremlin.
One order is clearly not enough to end the war. And judging by Putin's
nervous twitching, he recognizes this, and is in no state to do anything
apart from address shaman-like curses and threats at his subordinates. The
war continues, and there is no longer anything the Kremlin can do about it.

*******

#10
Parlamentskaya Gazeta
January 23, 2001
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
RUSSIA INTENDS TO DEVELOP DIALOGUE WITH NATO IN 21ST CENTURY
     Politicians, sociologists, the military, etc. are
pondering the question of what is in store for Russia in the
21st century.
One thing is clear: a lot will depend not only on the country's
economic progress, but also its ability to build relationships
with other states, the NATO countries not excluding.
     The military component of such relationships is discussed,
below, by the defense minister, Marshal of the Russian
Federation Igor SERGEYEV, in an interview with Oleg FALICHEV.
    
     Question: Your active involvement in the work of the
recent session of the NATO-Russia permanent joint council (PJC)
seems to be indicative of a pending resumption of the dialogue
with NATO after the air raids on Yugoslavia. But let me ask
another question for starters: Can we afford to ignore the
potential consequences of the United States' withdrawal from
the ABM treaty?
     Answer: The US is NATO's leading nation. And you are right:
this step, if and when the US makes it, will change the
alignment of forces in both Europe and the world. We have
firmly stated our position on the matter in this connection. It
is as follows: the ABM treaty is universally recognized to be a
cornerstone of strategic stability and the basis for a system
of international accords in the sphere of arms control.
     The treaty is now in jeopardy: the US has adopted the
course for deploying a national missile defense (NMD) system
that the treaty prohibits. A ban on such a system is the
provision around which the treaty revolves. In case the US
deploys an NMD system, the treaty would become senseless,
naturally.
     What are Russia's suggestions? We proceed from the premise
that the decision president Bill Clinton made last September -
to abstain from sanctioning the deployment of an NMD system at
that time and let the new Administration address the matter -
does not change anything. The US is continuing with a scaled
effort to build the system that includes tests of its separate
components.
     Our military-technological analysis indicates that the
threat of the so called rogue states delivering blows at the US
with their ICBMs - the argument the US employs to substantiate
NMD - is not seen as realistic. We see no other reason for
deploying an NMD system apart from the American desire to
obtain strategic superiority in the world.
     Our stance is therefore immutable. Russia will not agree
to have the treaty 'adapted' and thereby effectively derailed.
    
     Question: This seems to provide ample proof that NATO's
nature has not improved in the time since the bombing of
Yugoslavia. Nevertheless, Russia is resuming dialogue with the
alliance. Are there any 'points of contact'?
     Answer: Whether we want it or not, it is simply
counterproductive today to live behind an 'iron curtain' and
ignore processes in Europe and the world. NATO's nature is
improving, but very slowly: the cold war inertia hinders the
military bloc's transformation into a security structure. This
is a fact. But it is also a fact - albeit less noticeable -
that NATO's European members are expanding the effort to
preclude and settle crises and to amend the correlation between
the tasks of defense and those of peace making.
     Lastly, NATO's members increasingly appreciate that
without Russia they could not possibly discuss any serious
matters of making the world a secure place. Let me cite
examples.
     Russia and NATO have been trying to pool efforts to ensure
European and global security within the framework of the
Founding Act for over three years now. In that time, we have
passed through a period of romance and a period of
disappointment that has disrupted effectively all contacts.
     Today, we have decisively taken to the road of placing our
relations on new, more pragmatic rails with a view to making
them stable. Moreover, there is the common understanding that
'permafrost' in our relations is counterproductive. Russia and
NATO are two key players in the field of European and global
politics.
     Furthermore, Europe is facing the growing threat of
international terrorism and extremism that are based on illicit
drug trafficking, religious fanaticism and nationalism.
Organized crime and the proliferation of light firearms, and
the danger of a spread of mass destruction weapons only add to
the threat. The potentiality of new conflicts and crises
lingers in Europe.
     Of all the new-generation challenges that we are facing at
the start of the third millennium, the task of securing peace,
precluding wars and building mechanisms of settling conflicts
is the most topical and complicated. In this connection, the
level of cooperation between Russia and NATO is largely
instrumental to the European community's ability to ensure
peace and stability.
    
     Question: These are really important but, you must agree,
largely theoretical notions. What about practical steps?
     Answer: As we see it, cooperation with the alliance should
be developing predominantly on the practical plane. This
cooperation should facilitate the construction of a system of
collective European security system equipped with mechanisms of
precluding and settling conflicts primarily with peaceful
means.
     There are examples. Russia's participation in the
adjustment of the operational plan for the peace-making
operation in Kosovo and the NATO countries' participation in
the submarine Kursk rescue operation have demonstrated to the
world our potentialities of practical interaction.
    
     Question: These are good examples of joint actions that
should be promoted. But problems remain, don't they?
     Answer: Yes, there is a barrier that is rather hard to
overcome on the way to equal partnership - mutual mistrust.
Unfortunately, there is a deficit of trust in our
interrelationship a decade after the end of the cold war that
hinders cooperation between Russia and NATO.
     But Russia is not to blame. It was NATO's Washington
summit in 1999 that confirmed the course for building up the
military potential in the name of collective defense. Defense
against whom? Whence is the threat of a scaled attack on
Europe? This seems to be a NATO gimmick intended to preserve
the bloc's offensive capabilities. Otherwise, why should they
keep mighty American groupings in and around Europe?
     And the new strategic concept that was adopted at the
summit meeting enlarges NATO's zone of responsibility and
preserves its ability to act in circumvention of the UN
Security Council.
Russia is meanwhile reducing its armed forces and their
offensive potentialities. This country has stated that the
priority in its effort to ensure its security belongs to
broader cooperation, dialogue, and the maximum use of
non-military means of precluding conflicts.
     The matter of NATO's enlargement to the East is still
topical. NATO's top people claim that the alliance has no plans
to admit new members but cannot contain the inflow of
candidates that are said to be rushing through the door that
the Washington summit meeting had opened. This is not quite
true, to put it mildly. NATO is known to have strict terms of
admission. It may be that not everybody in NATO wants this
enlargement. But there are those who would like to see the
whole or a major part of Europe in NATO's web, in order to use
their influence on the bloc's decision-making and thus keep the
countries of Europe in the zone of their interests.
     Thus, Klaus Peter Kleiber, NATO's assistant secretary
general for political affairs, visited Moscow October 23, 2000,
to negotiate the opening of a NATO information bureau in Moscow
with the Russian foreign ministry. When asked by a
correspondent, whether NATO was planning further enlargement,
Kleiber said the answer would be No, but if the question was
whether NATO would be open to new members, the answer would be
Yes. The question of whether NATO would decide to further
enlarge in 2002, was absolutely open, he said.
     Now if European security cannot be efficient without
Russia, something that we hope the alliance recognizes in deed,
rather than in word, NATO should heed both Russia's interests
and concerns. Russia has a clear-cut strategy for the European
direction that is based on comprehensive cooperation, openness,
constructive approaches, and resolution of all outstanding
issues by political means.
     There have been many reports lately to the effect that
Russia is amending its stance on NATO's further enlargement by
admitting new members to make it more 'tolerant'. This
country's vision of NATO's further enlargement has been and is
immutable.
We believe this course is a bad political mistake. Russia
respects the right of any country to choose ways of ensuring
its security, but will in any case correlate the potential
consequences of NATO's enlargement with its national interests.
     At the same time, we hope that wisdom in the interests of
stability and security in Europe, rather than political
ambitions, will triumph in NATO. Let me repeat: there are good
prospects of expanding the Russia-NATO dialogue in many spheres
of cooperation that have been set forth in the Founding Act -
largely to the credit of NATO's secretary general Lord George
Robertson. His effort to stabilize our interrelationship is
highly evaluated in Russia.
    
     Question: What are Russia's suggestions for purpose of
expanding the dialogue?
     Answer: The priority seems to belong to cooperation in
peace making and settlement of crisis situations. There is the
need to summarize the Balkan experience and chart plans for the
future in a broader context, while coordinating steps with the
UN and the OSCE.
     Alas, we have not yet heard NATO's clear commitment to
never repeat the sad Yugoslav experience in connection with the
massive use of armed force in circumvention of the UN. The
philosophy of the might-is-right cult is a return to the policy
of confrontation that mankind has experienced on more than one
occasion in the 20th century. Russia suggests another road. It
is the road of pooling the efforts of all states for the
purpose of seeking responses to the challenges of the time.
     I would like to express concern in connection with the
additional deployment by the alliance of rapid deployment
forces in a broader zone of responsibility where they might
operate, including the post-Soviet space. This process needs to
be broadly discussed within the PJC framework.
     The matter of rescuing the crews of submarines in distress
is topical. Our visions of the matter and ways of resolving it
effectively coincide. Our experts have coordinated a program of
cooperation in this sphere.
     Another field for firm contacts is the construction of a
European ABM system aimed to maintain strategic and regional
stability in Europe. The two sides have similar views of the
scale of proliferation of mass destruction weapons, small- and
intermediate-range missiles included, and the threats they
present.
     Another important aspect. Russia is continuing the reform
of its armed forces. We are planning appreciable personnel
reductions, and are facing the problem of the released
personnel's social adaptation, where NATO's members could
provide assistance to us.
     In 1998, we started using Russia's military cargo planes
and tanker planes in peace-making operations. Today, there are
conditions for a resumption of cooperation in this sphere.
Presumably, a meeting of specialists on cooperation of the
Russian and Ukrainian forces and NATO structures could be
useful.
     We are cooperating with the alliance on a bilateral basis.
But there are prospects for good interaction in European
affairs with Germany, France, Britain and other NATO members.
    
     Question: My last question is about Russia's participation
in the Partnership For Peace program.
     Answer: We are abstaining from scaled participation in
exercises within the framework or in the spirit of PFP. Not all
exercises are useful from the viewpoint of our interests, some
of them have a clearly anti-Russian thrust and are staged in
the vicinity of the Russian border. For this reason, we will be
considering each event on the PFP program individually and
defining the format of Russia's participation proceeding from
their usefulness.
     At the same time, Russia may develop interaction with NATO
research institutions and the national PFP centers. A large
delegation of the NATO defense college in Rome visited Moscow
in late 2000. This practice is likely to continue.
     To summarize, we are prepared for realistic practical
cooperation and gradual development of our relations. If the
alliance is firmly steering to establishing equal relations,
the Russian defense ministry is prepared to consider the
opening of a military liaison mission in Moscow - provided the
sides come to a clear definition of functions, to be agreed by
the sides, that the mission will be performing.
    
******

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