Why yes! It is amazing! The followng article is from the New York Times from exactly two months ago as posted on FreeRepublic:
Russian Mothers Are Saving Their Sons in Chechnya
And this is what I wrote back then as related to your comment and this current article's topic.
Russian Mothers Are Saving Their Sons in Chechnya
#16 Posted on 07/08/2001 11:34:44 PDT by Pericles
What a bravura propaganda article by the New York Times. I especially like how the Russians are shown to be such savages on the poor Chechens. Once that picture of the Russians is painted then she can write about how bad the Chechens are. But of you read she is attacking just one group of Chechens, the Wahabists, and praising the other group of Chechens the one led by that 40 year old Chechen scholar. See the New York Times in a clever sleight of hand is throwing its support for the more moderate, anti-Wahabist elements.
Since the Caucuses are linked to the oil routes that will go through Turkey, and Turkey's alliance with Israel is of great importance, the NYT's is clearly attacking the Islamic Wahabists while praising the more moderate "traditional" Chechen rebels.
So to sum up. The NYT's is telling us; Russia is bad, the Chechen Islamic Wahabists are bad. The West should back the more secular "traditional" Chechens. If they control Chechnya, the pipeline would be secure and they would cause Israeli-Turkish relations any grief.
And then I wrote this:
#51 Posted on 07/13/2001 21:24:19 PDT by Pericles
I think IMHO, the "Chechens" did not think that the Russians would react the way they did when they went into Dagestan. I am sure they thought the least the Russians would do was move back from the border or retake what the Chechens took and that's it.
The Chechens were just as shocked as the Americans when the Russians kept on rolling the tanks up to and past Grozny.
Evidence of this were reports of no resistance to the Russian advance until Grozny and the lack of any Chechen heavy weapons to ward off the Russians (especially AA).
If the Russians planted those apartment bombs as a pretext to retake Chechnya it would have also served as a message to the Chechens and (some) Americans that the Russians were bloody serious this time.
With the "constitutional coup" initiated by the Russian FSB and military General staff we had Yeltsin eased out and Putin moved in.
The FSB is now calling the shots in Chechnya which explains the Russian hunter-killer units going after Chechen leaders and not the Chechen fighters per say.
It is also interesting to note that this head hunter tactic began after Putin and Bush had their summit.