#1
U.S.: Administration Called Naive On Its Dealings With Russian Corruption
By Andrew F. Tully


Experts on Russia are telling American legislators that the administration of 
U.S. President Bill Clinton has been naive about how to deal with Russia as 
it emerges from seven decades of communist rule. On Wednesday, two witnesses 
told a congressional committee hearing that the Clinton approach encouraged 
corruption in Russia. RFE/RL's Andrew F. Tully reports from Washington. 


Washington, 7 October 1999 (RFE/RL) -- A former U.S. ambassador to Belarus 
and a former CIA official told an American Congressional committee that the 
administration of President Bill Clinton has not been vigilant enough in 
addressing Russian corruption.


The first witness to testify Wednesday before the House of Representatives 
Foreign Relations Committee was David Swartz, whom former U.S. President 
George Bush -- a Republican -- named as ambassador to a newly independent 
Belarus in 1992.


Swartz said he resigned his post two years later, after Clinton -- a member 
of the opposition Democratic Party -- became president. Swartz said he felt 
the new administration was "naive" about the new Russian leadership.


"From my vantage point as a holdover ambassador in those first months, and 
with lengthy experience in the region, I felt that the new administration was 
too willing to take at face value punitive reformists and white-head, sort 
of, credentials of (Russian President Boris) Yeltsin himself and the people 
around him."


The former ambassador to Belarus said the Clinton administration's policy 
approach encouraged the culture of corruption in Russian business and 
government.


"The sum total of all of this, in my view, was a creation of a climate -- 
creation of a climate -- in Moscow of political and economic promiscuity 
where the impression reigned of a high U.S. tolerance level for these 
activities across a broad spectrum of the unofficial and official Russian 
community."


Swartz was followed by Fritz Ermarth, a former official of the U.S. Central 
Intelligence Agency and the White House's National Security Council. Ermarth 
agreed that the Clinton administration's policies left Russian business 
corruption unchallenged.


"What we call economic reform in Russia has really not created the market 
economy or capitalism that most hoped for. Rather, it created a kind of crony 
capitalism without much capitalism, or I'd call it 'phony crony capitalism,' 
where insider privatization in alliance with corrupt officialdom has produced 
a system dominated by a few powerful individuals or entities who strip wealth 
out of the country and send it abroad, rather than investing to create wealth 
and prosperity at home."


A member of the International Relations Committee, Congressman Sam Gejdenson, 
a member of Clinton's Democratic Party, defended the president. He said 
Clinton had taken an amorphous Russia policy developed by Bush and, as he put 
it, "gave it some form."


Gejdenson complained that the president's opponents, who urge reducing 
America's engagement of Russia, seem to be wishing for a return to the Cold 
War days.


"It sometimes seems to me there's a nostalgia -- 'Gee, if we only had this 
dictatorship that we knew how to confront rather than the unsure future of 
dealing with a country trying to become democratic.'"


Gejdenson said it would be, in his words, a "disaster" for America to begin 
limiting its ties with Russia.


Another Democrat, Congressman Tom Lantos, said the Clinton administration is 
in no way responsible for economic and political trouble in Russia. Instead, 
he attributed it to the nation's economic hardships.


Lantos noted that the former East Germany, with 17 million people, has 
received what he called a "transfusion" of $100 billion a year from West 
Germany since Germany was unified, and the new Germany is now thriving. But 
Russia, he said, has 150 million people and has received only about $1 
billion a year in direct economic aid from the Western democracies.


"I simply think that is wholly unrealistic to look away from the economic 
realities. The West hoped that they can facilitate the transformation of 
Russia from a totalitarian police state with a dysfunctional economy into a 
vibrant democracy with a functioning capitalist economy without any help."


American legislators have become increasingly concerned with corruption in 
Russia since August. At that time, reports surfaced of an investigation into 
the "laundering" of Russian currency through accounts at the Bank of New 
York. Some news accounts have said that as much as $15 billion may have been 
moved through these accounts. At least one Western news organization has 
reported that some money that the International Monetary Fund loaned to the 
Russian central bank may have been involved. There has been no evidence that 
any IMF money has been laundered.


On Tuesday, prosecutors in New York filed charges against three people -- all 
of them Russian natives -- and three small companies on charges of illegally 
accepting money from Russia and transferring it without the proper licenses. 
Federal prosecutors say they expect to file additional charges in the case.


Money laundering is moving illegally earned funds through several bank 
accounts until its source is obscured and appears to be legitimate.  

#4
CIS states begin conference to thrash out anti-terror strategy

YALTA, Ukraine, Oct 8 (AFP) - Premiers from 10 ex-Soviet republics got down 
to work Friday on a regional blueprint to eradicate suspected terrorists 
blamed for strife in Chechnya and Central Asia.

"Terrorism will be at the heart of the debates," Ukrainian Foreign Minister 
Boris Tarasyuk said here as the meeting got underway.

The 10 government leaders were also due to discuss the creation of a free 
trade zone among the CIS states, the distribution of the overseas assets left 
over from the former Soviet Union, and the creation of an economic council.

Last week interior ministers from the Commonwealth of Independent States 
(CIS) that groups former Soviet republics, except for the three Baltic 
states, announced the creation of a joint anti-terrorist centre.

The body would "organise and coordinate" the fight against Islamic rebels 
operating across Russia, and in the Central Asian republics of Uzbekistan, 
Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

The Yalta meeting comes against the background of a massive Russian ground 
offensive in Chechnya, launched a week ago to crush Islamic rebels operating 
out of the rebel republic.

Russian forces have seized control of the northern third of Chechnya after 
rolling its troops into the separatist republic for the first time since the 
brutal 1994-96 war.

Moscow has angrily denounced Chechnya for acting as a rear base for 
international "terrorists" it believes masterminded a wave of apartment block 
bombings that killed 292 people last month and sent the nation into shock.

Russia says the same guerrillas, led by feared warlord Shamil Basayev, 
carried out two incursions into the southern Russian republic of Dagestan in 
August and September in which more than 280 federal troops died.

While Basayev's avowed aim was to recreate a 19th century Islamic republic in 
the Northern Caucasus comprising Chechnya and Dagestan, Uzbekistan and 
Kyrgyzstan are battling Islamic insurgents of their own.

A February bomb attack allegedly carried out by a sect advocating the 
creation of an single Islamic state in Central Asia left 16 dead and 128 
wounded in the Uzbek capital Tashkent.

And in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, government troops for six weeks have been 
hunting down a band of armed Muslim fundamentalists who took hostage four 
Japanese scientists and several local militia.

Central Asian countries this week launched a unified air assault against the 
group, but so far without any reported success.

The CIS, built on the ashes of the Soviet Union which collapsed in 1991, 
loosely groups the republics of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, 
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and 
Turkmenistan.

Kazakhstan is represented here by Deputy Foreign Minister Anatoly Smirnov, 
while Belarus shined by its absence. President Alexander Lukashenko 
complained recently that the CIS was "deprived of any prospects for 
development and plays no part even as a political club."

Weakened by internal disagreements, the CIS has turned into something of a 
divorce court in which the ex-Soviet states settle their arguments before 
parting ways.

During the last CIS summit in Moscow in April, Azerbaijan, Georgia and 
Uzbekistan withdrew from the Collective Security Pact. Ukraine has long 
snubbed the pact through mistrust of its much larger neighbour Russia.

Only Armenia and Belarus seem determined to maintain close military links 
with Moscow, leaving little prospect for real progress on thrashing out a 
coherent anti-terror strategy. 

#5
Conflict-Caucasus: Conflict in Chechnya Intensifies


MOSCOW, (Oct. 6) IPS - As Russian armored columns moved deeper into Chechnya, 
supported by air strikes and artillery barrages, hopes of a successful 
outcome to the conflict seemed to grow higher in Moscow today. 


Meanwhile, Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov called a state of military 
emergency and declared war on Russia. He "has exhausted all means of peaceful 
solution," his chief representative in Moscow Mairbek Vachagayev said. 


"Air strikes and ground assault amount to a barbarous punishment of the whole 
Chechen people," said Abdul-Khakim Sultygov, director of the Institute of 
Political Technologies, a Moscow-based think- tank close to the Chechen 
Diaspora. 


However, the outflow of thousands of Chechen refugees and imminent war 
casualties could undermine Russia's shaky footing on the eve of crucial 
parliamentary elections in December. 


Russia started its military action after Chechen Muslim rebels failed to 
establish a permanent fighting force in neighboring Dagestan in August, a 
move aimed at setting up an Islamic state in the northern Caucasus region. 


Chechen rebels have also been blamed for a series of deadly apartment block 
bombings in Moscow and other Russian cities in September, which killed some 
300 people. 


Russian troops had seized control of a third of Chechnya and advanced on to 
the Terek River, Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin reported yesterday. 
The river is believed to be the border of a planned buffer zone to keep 
rebels at bay. 


Recent opinion polls suggest that a majority of Russians now support military 
action in Chechnya. Yesterday, Putin also announced that Russia had to review 
its security priorities to respond to the perceived threat from terrorists in 
Chechnya. 


However, as public support could evaporate easily as soon as conscripts' 
coffins start arriving in Russian cities, the Russians are taking all kinds 
of precautions to avoid casualties. So far the government has admitted the 
loss of four soldiers and two warplanes, although rebel Chechens claim to 
have killed over 120 men. 


The Russian media has also speculated that Russia plans to cut Chechnya in 
two, with federal troops controlling the flatlands area north of the Terek 
River -- which used to be a part of Russian Stavropol region before World War 
II. 


The generals are obviously trying to drive Chechen rebels into hiding in the 
mountains of southern Chechnya -- where it would be difficult to sustain 
large-scale resistance. 


Furthermore, Russia now seems also to rely on an economic blockade. In early 
October, Russia's energy monopolies -- the national power grid system and the 
world's largest gas firm, Gazprom, virtually stopped supplies to Chechnya. 


Moscow is apparently aiming at eroding popular support for the rebels through 
such indiscriminate retaliation. 


The Russian government also rejected an international mediation urged by 
Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov. 


Visiting Norwegian foreign minister Knut Vollebaek, chairman of the 
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), was bluntly told 
that Russia does not need mediators to talk with members of the Russian 
federation. 


Facing air strikes, ground assault and growing hardships, some 125,000 
Chechen refugees have poured into neighboring Ingushetia, populated by 
Ingushs, people ethnically close -- and thus sympathetic -- to Chechens. 


While impoverished Ingushetia is unable to sustain the inflow of refugees, 
the Russian federal government has refused to allow displaced persons passage 
to other Russian cities, where they may have relatives who could care for 
them. 


On Oct. 4, New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) expressed "profound 
concern" for the safety and well-being of civilians displaced by renewed 
bombardments over Chechnya, and by the prospect of the conflict's escalation. 


HRW claimed that such restrictions violate Russian law, which provides its 
citizens with freedom of movement throughout the country and also Russian 
obligations under international law. 


Human rights activists argue that while the Russian government has a 
legitimate right to prevent acts of terrorism, it may not do so by banning an 
entire displaced population from travelling beyond Ingushetia. 


"Anti-Chechen rhetoric and 'Checheno-phobia' are extremely dangerous for 
Russia, the country where 150 larger and smaller nations dwell," argues 
Jabrail Gakayev, chairman of the Union of Chechen Organizations and 
Communities in Russia. 


"Some 500,000 Chechen are living in Russia -- outside Chechnya proper -- and 
95 percent are sincerely interested in quelling terrorism," he told IPS. 


The Kremlin set up a commission to provide for the needs of the displaced and 
to assure "normal living conditions" in Russian- controlled districts of 
Chechnya and Pres. Boris Yeltsin established a special commission to resettle 
refugees. 


But human rights activists argue that sending displaced persons to such 
districts would recklessly endanger their security and constitute a blatant 
violation of Russia's international obligations. 


Yesterday, Human Rights Watch formally urged the Russian Prime Minister to 
freeze all plans to move displaced persons to areas that are part of the 
conflict zone or that may become the sites of military engagement. 


The Russian operation has raised fears that there could be a repeat of the 
1994-96 war, which killed some 100,000 people, mostly civilians and poorly 
trained conscripts, and reduced the Chechen capital of Grozny to rubble. 


However, some analysts claim that the renewed Chechen campaign by the Russian 
troops could also be part of a domestic preelection agenda, designed to 
improve the chances of Putin and other Yeltsin's followers. 


Chechenophobia and anti-Moslem hatred are part of a "controlled tension" 
scenario, to deflect Russian public scrutiny from the country's real issues, 
such as endemic graft, Denga Khalidov, director of the Institute of Islamic 
Issues told IPS. 


Russian officials concede that the use of Chechen crisis for political gains 
could be extremely dangerous. 


"The nationalist card must not be played in preelection games," said Oleg 
Mironov, head of the governmental Human Rights office. Combat against 
terrorism should not cause sufferings of peaceful citizens, the Russian 
Ombudsman told IPS. 


However, it remains to be seen whether Russia this time could manage to avoid 
unwanted and potentially destabilizing repercussions -- high casualties and 
political tensions. 

#6
Moscow Times
October 7, 1999 
DEFENSE DOSSIER: Army Fights Wiser Enemy 
By Pavel Felgenhauer 


Russian forces are moving deeper and deeper into Chechnya, the rebellious 
North Caucasus republic that has defied Moscow's rule since 1991. The Chechen 
resistance up to now has been insignificant. One third of Chechnya is already 
under Russian control and Russian casualties are relatively low. Prime 
Minister Vladimir Putin is talking of establishing a pro-Russian 
administration in "liberated" Chechnya as if victory is already at hand. 


This new invasion of Chechnya began as a limited operation to create a cordon 
sanitaire around Chechnya to prevent rebel attacks against Russian-controlled 
regions. However, soon after the operation began, Russian generals reported 
to their political masters that there were not enough troops to create a 
solid defense line covering the hole 700-kilometer-long Chechen-Russian 
border. So a decision was made to shrink the perimeter by occupying part of 
Chechnya's territory and taking up militarily advantageous positions in order 
to make the Russian cordon sanitaire into something more than just a 
propaganda slogan. 


The northern third of Chechnya is a sparsely populated, arid steppe. 
Occupying it was an easy job for the Russians. The northern bank of the Terek 
River that goes through Chechnya from west to east is a good line of defense. 
It is deep, wide and fast - a good barrier to stop hostile infiltration. 


Chechen territory north of the Terek has been inhabited for centuries by 
Russian Cossacks. This region only became part of Chechnya in the 1950s after 
a decision by the Communist Politburo in Moscow. Today, many Russian 
nationalists support the occupation of northern Chechnya as a first step 
toward its incorporation back into Russia. 


The gradual invasion of Chechnya has made Chechnya's defense line some 20 
percent shorter and has been, in general, supported by most Russian political 
parties and by the Russian public. But this same cordon sanitaire strategy 
has united all Chechen fractions in opposing a new occupation. The defense 
perimeter may be 20 percent shorter, but the number of Russia's enemies in 
the region has increased tenfold. 


In recent fighting in Dagestan against no more than a couple of thousand 
Chechen-led Moslem rebels, Russian forces sustained more than 1,100 
casualties, both dead and wounded. In future battles in Chechnya the Russians 
may be forced to face tens of thousands of determined fighters and Russian 
casualties will grow accordingly. 


Russian leaders are fools if they believe that the coming war will be a 
cakewalk and that the currently insignificant Chechen resistance is a prelude 
to a collapse of their independence movement. Today the Chechens are 
retreating in an organized manner, but this is a prelude not to surrender, 
but to impending fierce and well-planned counterattacks. Chechen President 
Aslan Maskhadov - a brilliant military tactician - is, apparently, again 
taking over coordination of Chechen forces. During the1994-96 war, Maskhadov 
planned many a Chechen victory. 


The Chechens are much better prepared to face the Russian army than during 
the last war. This week the Chechens shot two Russian bombers out of the sky. 
The Russians also lost one Su-25 bomber last month in Dagestan, whereas 
during the 20 months of intense combat in 1994-96 the Chechens downed only 
one Russian attack warplane. 


At the beginning of the 1994-96 conflict, the Chechens had several hundred 
portable surface-to-air, heat-seeking Igla-1 missiles. However, the 
Soviet-made Igla has a built-in "identification of friend or foe radar 
interrogator" designed to prevent the loss of aircraft from friendly fire. 


During the previous Chechen war, these "smart" weapons recognized Russian 
airplanes as friendly and could not be activated. Apparently, the Chechens 
have managed to rewire some of the Igla missiles. In any event, the Russian 
air superiority in the Caucasus has been compromised. 


Of course, the Russian air force has hundreds and hundreds of warplanes. But 
the number of first class pilots is much more limited, so each loss is a 
significant blow. 


The Russian forces in and around Chechnya face a prospect of a bleak winter: 
defending a cordon sanitaire that the enemy will penetrate with growing 
efficiency and vigor, while having much less air support than they hoped for. 
The quagmire the Russian government said it wanted to avoid seems all set. 


Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent Moscow-based defense analyst.

#7
Boston Globe
8 October 1999
Editorial
Darkness in Chechnya 


''Once, I remember, we came upon a man-of-war anchored off the coast. There 
wasn't even a shed there and she was shelling the bush.... There was a touch 
of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the sight; 
and it was not dissipated by somebody on board assuring me earnestly there 
was a camp of natives - he called them enemies! - hidden out of sight 
somewhere.''
  ''Heart of Darkness,'' by Joseph Conrad


>From the czarist campaigns of the last century through Stalin's mass 
deportations and into the post-Soviet period, Chechnya and the northern 
Caucasus have been Russia's heart of darkness.


The Russian assault of the past two weeks is no less insane than the sight 
described by Conrad's narrator. It can hardly achieve the Russian aims of 
apprehending terrorists or protecting neighboring republics from Islamist 
troublemakers.


Russia's current campaign against the Chechens may be even worse because 
there are signs that the government of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his 
old comrades in the security service provoked the last round of chaos in the 
Caucasus. 


Recent incursions into Dagestan by a couple of guerrilla field commanders in 
Chechnya were a response to the harassment of border villages by groups 
believed to have been infiltrated by the KGB's successor, the FSB. And Moscow 
has produced no evidence that four recent apartment house bombings were the 
work of Chechens.


For the sake of stability in the Caucasus and democracy in Russia, Washington 
should exert pressure on Moscow to take up Chechen offers of dialogue, 
mediation, and acceptance of peacekeeping observers. In Russia's modern 
version of ''Heart of Darkness, '' one lawless colonizer is firing blindly 
into the territory of a lost colony that has fallen into the hands of its own 
outlaws.

#8
New military doctrine allows nuclear arms use in critical situations


MOSCOW. Oct  7 (Interfax)  - The draft of the new Russian military
doctrine allows Russia to use nuclear arms in critical situations.  The
draft completed by the Defense Ministry will soon be discussed by the
Russian Security Council. The preamble of the doctrine which Interfax
received states that it has purely  defense purposes.  Nevertheless, it
speaks for  "protecting national interests, guaranteeing the military
security of Russia and its allies."  The document  has three  sections:  the
political, strategic and economic foundations   of  military security.
Compared  with  others, political foundations are decisive.  The section on
the current military-political situation states that it is marked by "a
conflict of two tendencies," on the one hand, attempts to establish a
unipolar world  based on the domination of one super power and to settle key
problems in world politics by armed force, on the other, the formation of a
multipolar world.
 
   The doctrine  names 10  basic features  of  the  military-political
situation, such  as the  declining threat of a world war, the appearance and
strengthening  of regional  centers of  force, growing  national and
religious extremism,  the escalation  of local wars and armed conflicts, the
aggravation of propaganda confrontation.

   The doctrine  names among  the key  factors  of  military-political
instability support  for extremist,  nationalist, religious,  separatist and
terrorist  movements and  organizations. The declining effectiveness of
existing  international security  mechanisms, primarily  the U.N. and OSCE
are one more factor.
 
  There is a separate  paragraph on  key security  threats,  both
international and  local. The  13 foreign  threats  include  territorial
claims to  Russia, a  military buildup  changing the  balance  near  the
borders of Russia and its allies and in the seas washing them.  Military
threats are posed  by the expansion of military alliances to  the detriment
of  Russian  military  security,  by  international terrorism and media
campaigns hostile to Russia and its allies.  The draft  doctrine names six
fundamental domestic threats, such as attempts to overthrow the
constitutional system, the unlawful operations of extremist, nationalist,
religious, separatist and terrorist movements and organizations,  the
formation,  equipment, training and operation of unlawful armed  groups,
organized  crime, terrorism, smuggling and other illegal activities on a
scale threatening military security.

   The doctrine regards nuclear arms  "as an effective factor of
deterrence, guaranteeing the military security of the Russian Federation and
its allies, supporting international stability and peace."   Nuclear arms as
a deterrence  potential  should  be  capable  "of guaranteeing calculated
damage" to any aggressor - one country or a coalition - under any
circumstances, the draft says.  The section  on nuclear  weapons says  that
Russia  "will  not  use nuclear arms against non-nuclear members of the
nonproliferation treaty except for cases of  an invasion or any other
attack"  on Russia or a country with which it has recorded security
commitments. However, the concept says that "the Russian Federation reserves
the right to  use nuclear weapons in response to the use of nuclear or other
mass destruction  weapons against it or its allies, and also in response to
large-scale aggression involving conventional  arms in situations critical
for the national security of Russia and its allies."

   The section on the strategic foundations of military security describes
the nature of modern wars and their main features. It defines the notions of
a world, regional and local war and armed conflict. Unlike a war, an armed
conflict may be caused by attempts "to settle national,  religious and  some
other  nonfundamental differences" through a limited armed operation.

   The doctrine allows Russia "to deploy on agreement limited armed
contingents (military  bases) in  strategic areas  of  the  world."  The
purpose of  the basis  is to  promote the formation and maintenance of a
stable military-strategic balance of forces.  The doctrine  also speaks  of
the need to concentrate financial and other resources  to carry  out key
military security tasks. It says the supplies of the defense industry should
be on par with military security needs. The draft  doctrine will  soon be
published in  full  in  Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper.

#9
St. Petersburg Times
8 October 1999
Russia's Nuclear Weapons Program Still Killing
Editor's note: This is the first article in a three-part series.
By Anna Badkhen
STAFF WRITER


CHELYABINSK OBLAST, Ural Mountains - One fall afternoon in 1957, 7-year-old 
Alexander Dunayev was splashing barefoot in rain puddles with 10 other boys 
in the Ural Mountains town of Kasli. The puddles were unusually warm, Dunayev 
recalls, and the air was thick with an eerie, dark-orange fog.


That fog, Dunayev later learned, was a toxic nuclidic cloud carrying roughly 
2 million curies of radioactive fallout from an explosion earlier that day at 
a nuclear weapons plant just 18 kilometers to the south.


The temperature control system for one of the plant's storage facilities, 
which contained 80 tons of highly active liquid nuclear waste, malfunctioned. 
Uncontrolled, the waste self-heated until all the liquid evaporated, leaving 
dry sodium compounds, which burned until the temperature inside the container 
reached nearly 350 degrees Celsius.


At 4:20 p.m. Sept. 29, 1957, the overheated container exploded, releasing 20 
million curies of deadly strontium and cerium - about 40 percent of that 
released by the Chernobyl disaster - into the air. A toxic cloud measuring 2 
million curies crept across hundreds of kilometers of farmland.


Before it eventually dissipated, the cloud would engulf over 200 towns and 
villages, exposing over a quarter million people to lethal doses of radiation.


With half-lives of roughly 30 years each, the strontium-90 and cerium-144 
that was released in the blast will continue to pollute the area for 
generations to come.


The regions of the Chelyabinsk and Sverdlovsk Oblasts contaminated by the 
300-kilometers-long, 50-kilometers-wide radioactive cloud emitted by the 
plant is now called the Eastern Ural Radioactive Trace. The town of Kasli was 
one of the first communities to be enveloped by the trace.


"Of the boys who were there with me, running around barefoot after the rain - 
of these 10 boys, only four are still alive," said Dunayev, who is now the 
vice governor of Kasli. "But the explosion and its consequences were 
classified, and nobody knew exactly why people were suddenly dying."


Within a year and a half after the explosion, about 10,700 residents of the 
23 most polluted collective farms were forced to move and their farms were 
liquidated. State officials gave little explanation as to why people were 
being relocated: the reprocessing plant, then called simply Plutonium Plant 
and known today as Mayak, helped produce nuclear weapons, and everything 
related to its activities was top secret. Only during a rare public session 
of the Supreme Council in 1989 did Soviet authorities finally admit that the 
accident happened. Until then, none of the thousands of people living in the 
contaminated area knew what to call the deadly neighbor that had settled on 
their land.


"The state government hid behind the fact that the information was 'top 
secret' and shifted its problems onto the shoulders of the local population, 
depriving the people of [clean] water reserves, fields and pastures," Dunayev 
said. "Some of the documents [regarding the accident] will be classified for 
many years to come. We might not live to learn the whole truth."


The Liquidators


Vladimir Luginin was an 18-year-old tractor driver at the Stalin collective 
farm in Kasli at the time of the accident. Luginin and his fellow drivers 
were instructed by local authorities to plow farmland in the Bagaryaksky 
district, the area most contaminated by the radioactive trace.


"They picked us up at work, during working hours, with our tractors and told 
us to plow the land," Luginin recalls. "They paid us a little extra money for 
doing the job."


But neither Luginin, nor Alexander Mukhin, whose job it was to inventory the 
collective farms being liquidated, were told why all the buildings and crops 
had to be leveled to the ground.


"We were told nothing about the explosion," Mukhin, now 70, recalls. "We were 
told that 'something had happened,' that's all."


"We were told that [the land] was 'dirty,' but nobody explained to us what 
kind of dirt it was," he said. "This is what the entire tragedy of the 
accident is about: radiation doesn't look like anything; it doesn't smell."


Mukhin, for example, ate wild berries that grew in the contaminated fields 
and dined on freshly-picked vegetables at the villages he helped liquidate. 
"I inspected the food for [visible] dirt, and it certainly didn't look dirty 
to me," he said.


Only months later, when scientists from Moscow and Leningrad arrived carrying 
their own canned food and bottled water, did Mukhin and his fellow 
liquidators realize that "the dirt [the authorities] were talking about was 
not regular dirt."


Of the people who were sent into the contaminated areas, none were equipped 
to deal with radioactive fallout, Mukhin said. In fact, he said, he never 
even saw a Geiger counter until 1963 - six years after the explosion.


"Originally, we thought the [contamination] would quickly go away," he said. 
"But later we were told that it will be here for millennia." Staring out 
about the hilly landscape of Kasli, Mukhin added: "This is a zone of 
environmental catastrophe."


Of the 13 people on his liquidating team, he is the only one still alive.


Luginin, who is now dying of stomach cancer, said he only found out in 1976 - 
when he suddenly lost feeling in his legs - that he had been exposed.


"I was in the Crimea, and suddenly I couldn't feel my legs. The doctors asked 
me whether I had ever been irradiated, and I said no," said Luginin, a 
fragile 60-year-old man who looks 80. "How was I supposed to know that I had 
been exposed to radiation?"


It wasn't until 1996 - 39 years after the accident - that Luginin received an 
official document proving he was a liquidator. Shortly after receiving his 
"liquidator" status, his doctors told him that he is fatally ill. "I felt 
like I was hit on the head with an ax," he said, crying.


The 1957 explosion dealt another blow to Luginin and his wife, Valentina. 
Five years ago, their only son, Sergei, now 19, was diagnosed with leukemia - 
a disease common in people and children of people exposed to high doses of 
radiation.


Sergei, classified as an invalid by the state, says his disease has destroyed 
his immune system to the point that he is afraid to leave his parents' house 
in Kasli.


"If I get sneezed at, I will stay in bed for months afterwards," Sergei said. 
"I can't go to school, and I can't go to work. I am very weak."


While being treated for leukemia in 1995, Sergei suffered a stroke, which 
paralyzed the left side of his body. He has recovered somewhat since, but 
says his memory isn't what it used to be.


"I forget the simplest things: I go to the bakery, take the change but forget 
the bread," he said. "When I was 16 and went to get my passport, I forgot 
what a passport was called. It is pathetic."


Sergei said he wants to be a carpenter, but is afraid that hard work will 
exacerbate his health problems.


"He really wants to work," Valentina says. "He cries often because he can't 
work."

#10
Washington Times
7 October 1999
[for personal use only]
Russia tells U.S. it will violate arms pact
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES


Russia informed the United States yesterday it will violate an international 
conventional arms agreement by sending more ground forces to southern Russia 
in the ongoing battle against Chechen rebels, U.S. and Russian officials said.

     Moscow invoked the "supreme national interest" provisions of the 1990 
Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) agreement in notifying the United States 
and other countries of the action. The CFE treaty limits the number of tanks, 
artillery pieces, aircraft and other non-nuclear arms that can be deployed in 
Europe.

     The move is a sign that Russia plans to step up its military operations 
against the Islamic rebels in southern Russia. 

     The Russians made the notification at the 30-nation Organization for 
Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Vienna, Austria.

     A senior Senate aide said the move casts doubt on Moscow's arms-control 
obligations and raises questions about whether Russia will abide by other 
agreements such as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty being debated in the 
Senate.

     "Our people in Vienna were instructed today to inform the OSCE that in 
order to curtail the activities of terrorists in Chechnya we have deployed a 
concentration of forces exceeding the limits of the Vienna document," Russian 
Embassy spokesman Mikhail Shurgalin told The Washington Times.

     Mr. Shurgalin said the Chechen rebels' activities "jeopardize national 
and international security."

     "We expect understanding from our counterparts of the fact that we were 
compelled to do this," he said, referring to other OSCE member states.

     The spokesman said that Russia remains committed to the CFE treaty.

     White House National Security Council spokesman David Leavy said the 
Russians "told us that they have exceeded CFE regional limits due to their 
operations in the North Caucasus.

     The notification was "positive" for Russian treaty compliance because 
"the fact that the Russians explained the impact of current military actions 
on treaty limits demonstrated that the treaty is an important tool to 
exercise international scrutiny," Mr. Leavy said.

     The initial CFE treaty set military hardware limits for NATO and Warsaw 
Pact forces. The treaty was revised after the Warsaw Pact ended in 1989. More 
than 50,000 pieces of conventional hardware were eliminated under the 
agreement.

     In 1996, the OSCE altered the treaty to allow Russia to deploy 
additional forces on its northern and southern borders as part of a so-called 
"flank agreement."

     In April, Moscow approved the CFE revisions, and the Russian agreement 
was to be part of a new treaty to be discussed next month at an OSCE summit 
in Istanbul.

     Moscow's announced violation of the CFE yesterday will complicate 
diplomatic efforts to conclude a revised treaty, said U.S. officials.

     Moscow also had sought changes in the arms agreement because of the 
addition of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland to the NATO alliance and 
fears of being encircled.

     Russia's Foreign Ministry said after agreement was reached to modify the 
CFE force limits in April that the changes "strengthen the long-term treaty 
foundations of European security" and that the "Vienna decision is a step in 
this direction."

     The announcement yesterday is a sign Moscow could not go along with the 
revised terms of the flank agreement that allowed them to keep more forces 
closer to Russian borders than under the original 1990 pact.

     "They invoked the 'supreme national interest' clause of the agreement," 
said one administration official familiar with the matter. "They said they 
were exceeding the limits of the flank agreement to pursue Chechen 
'terrorists.' "

     A senior Senate aide said Russia's announcement of a CFE treaty 
violation supports the argument of test-ban treaty critics who say it should 
be rejected.

     "The administration said they [had] roped in countries like Russia to 
ban testing and here they are violating the conventional arms agreement," the 
aide said. "They are busting the ceilings of the CFE."

     Another Senate aide said "this is one more example of Russia violating 
arms-control treaties when it's convenient."

     "If the Russians can be honest enough to say when they are acting in 
their own supreme national interest, we can only hope the Clinton 
administration will learn the lesson and do the same on the [Anti-Ballistic 
Missile] Treaty," the aide said.

     The CFE agreement appears to have been a casualty of Russia's latest war 
against Chechen separatist rebels that began about two weeks ago.

     Heavy air strikes and artillery barrages continued pounding northwestern 
Chechnya, located in the southern Russian Caucasus region, the Associated 
Press reported from Grozny, the Chechen capital, yesterday.

     Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev said Russia's military may launch 
an even broader military offensive. "Everything will depend on the 
situation," Mr. Sergeyev said.

     Ground forces began moving into Chechnya last week after weeks of aerial 
bombardment, and Moscow claims to have seized about one-third of Chechnya 
from the separatist rebels.

     Bombing raids have included attacks on oil refineries and other economic 
targets, as well as bases of Islamic militants.

     The military strikes were followed by terrorist bombings of buildings in 
Moscow and other Russian cities that are believed to be the work of Chechen 
terrorists.

     Russian forces were defeated during a 1994-96 military campaign against 
Chechnya. The latest conflict began after Chechen rebels moved against 
neighboring Dagestan.

#11
The Russia Journal
October 4-10, 1999
Conscripts still backbone of Russia's armed forces
By IGOR FROLOV 
 
While Russian peacekeeping formations in Bosnia and Kosovo are made up of 
professional soldiers and officers in their 20s and 30s, Russia's armed 
forces overall are composed mainly of conscripts. That includes troops 
fighting - and dying - in the country's flaring battles in the Dagestan 
region.


Some critics, including soldiers' mothers, charge that the Defense Ministry 
is sending raw recruits as canon-fodder to fight Islamic rebels coming out of 
Chechnya, a charge denied by a top military official.


"This is not true," said Maj. Gen. Valery Astanin, the spokesman for the 
Russian General Headquarters. "I admit there have been several occasions [of 
this happening], but the blame for them lies entirely with medium-rank 
commanders, not the high command."


Astanin insisted that the General Headquarters chief issued a directive 
ordering that only trained soldiers and officers be sent into action - "those 
who have served at least six months and have taken a special course of 
advanced training."


"And the same system is established by Presidential Decree No. 1237, dated 
Sept. 16, 1999. And I want to stress that all 'raw recruits' who took part in 
the military actions in Dagestan did so of their free will, i.e. 
volunteered," he added.


Many critics are not convinced, however. According to Tatarstan Parliament 
Speaker Farid Mukhametshin, two of the six soldiers drafted from Tatarstan 
and killed in Dagestan had been drafted only 42 days before their deaths. 


Critics say there is no way they could have received the required training in 
that period of time. Experts say that keeping a professional army is 300 
percent more expensive than a conscript army. Most agree that Russia cannot 
afford to give up the conscript system. 


Astanin told The Russia Journal that the presidential decree of 1996, which 
ordered a transition to a professional army by year 2000, has been delayed 
"and will be implemented when possible."


That has not satisfied a group of mothers worried about the fate of their 
soldier sons.


"We do not want our children to be sent to the war in Dagestan, and our 
protest is supported throughout all of Russia," said Valentina Melnikova, 
secretary of Russia's Association of Soldiers' Mothers Committees.


She added that in many cities of Russia, including on the Baltic Sea coast, 
in Yekaterinburg and in Nizhni Tagil, soldiers' mothers have been picketing 
at military compounds where units were formed for dispatching to Dagestan. 


The situation also has aroused the concern of regional authorities. 
Infuriated by the deaths of the Tatar conscripts, the State Council of 
Tatarstan adopted a resolution suspending the draft in the republic until 43 
conscripts who are citizens of Tatarstan are withdrawn from the action zone.


Anatoly Kvashnin, chief of General Headquarters, complained to Russia's 
prosecutor general that the Tatarstan parliament's resolution was unlawful 
and violated the Russian Constitution. 


Eventually, a compromise was reached between the federal government and 
Tatarstan authorities in which the military promised it no longer would send 
first-year soldiers from the republic into Dagestani battle and would pull 
those already in combat out.


Astanin said that units in the North Caucasus are examining their personnel 
in order to prevent inexperienced soldiers from going into battle. 


He also said that all drafted soldiers and NCOs deployed for combat in the 
area are volunteers who indicate their willingness to fight in their personal 
reports. 


That provision is abided by even though the warfare in Dagestan does not 
require asking combat-ready soldiers to volunteer, the General Staff officer 
added. 


"A specific member of the federation is suffering an aggression from 
extremists and international terrorists," Astanin said. "And in such cases, 
the voluntary participation principle is invalid."


Despite the controversy, officials insist morale is high with troops fighting 
in the region. They say volunteerism is high, especially among soldiers with 
links to Dagestan.


Ensign Alexei Onatsky, who volunteered to fight in Dagestan, said: "I 
volunteered because I want to earn some money. Several ensigns and privates 
from my unit volunteered with me. They are directing us for special training, 
and then we'll move to our new units."