WAR HAS NO RULES FOR RUSSIAN FORCES BATTLING CHECHEN REBELS
By MAURA REYNOLDS
“I remember a Chechen female sniper. We just tore her apart with two armored personnel carriers, having tied her ankles with steel cables. There was a lot of blood, but the boys needed it.”
“The main thing is to have them die slowly. You don’t want them to die fast, because a fast death is an easy death.”
“The summary executions don’t just take place against suspected fighters. One 33-year-old army officer recounted how he drowned a family of five—four women and a middle-aged man—in their own well.”
“You should not believe people who say Chechens are not being exterminated. In this Chechen war, it’s done by everyone who can do it,” he said. “There are situations when it’s not possible. But when an opportunity presents itself, few people miss it.”
“I would kill all the men I met during mopping-up operations. I didn’t feel sorry for them one bit.”
“It’s much easier to kill them all. It takes less time for them to die than to grow.”
“So there will be one Chechen less on the planet, so what? Who will cry for him?”
Los Angeles Times, Sunday, 17 Sept, MOSCOW:
They call it bespredel—literally, “no limits.” It means acting outside the rules, violently and with impunity. It translates as “excesses” or “atrocities.”
It’s the term Russian soldiers use to describe their actions in Chechnya.
“Without bespredel, we’ll get nowhere in Chechnya,” a 21-year-old conscript explained. “We have to be cruel to them. Otherwise, we’ll achieve nothing.”
Since Russia launched a new war against separatist rebels in its republic of Chechnya a year ago, Russian and Western human rights organizations have collected thousands of pages of testimony from victims about human rights abuses committed by Russian servicemen against Chechen civilians and suspected rebel fighters.
To hear the other side of the story, a Times reporter traveled to more than half a dozen regions around Russia and interviewed more than two dozen Russian servicemen returning from the war front.
What they recounted largely matches the picture painted in the human rights reports: The men freely acknowledge that acts considered war crimes under international law not only take place but are also commonplace.
In fact, most admitted committing such acts themselves—everything from looting to summary executions to torture.
“There was bespredel all the time,” one 35-year-old soldier said. “You can’t let it get to you.
Russians and the Chechens deserve each other.
Meanwhile, Putin has lost the larger war. Mother Russia is mortally wounded and dying. He is powerless to stop it
Violence brings violence. I’m not telling Russians are saints there but they ‘ve just given muslims their own medicine.
History proved it’s only way to restrain them.