"The snow will melt and the passes will be clear. I'll go back and will fight. We have no other choice," said a 22-year-old Chechen who declined to be named. "I have weapons at home, stashed away."

He believes it is better to die in Chechnya defending his homeland "than to sit here on humanitarian aid."

Chechen people make no difference between the separatists' leader Aslan Maskhadov and the terrorists Khattab, Basayev and Gelayev, said Colonel General Valery Manilov, the First Deputy Chief of the General Staff.


He claims Maskhadov has never alienated himself from the terrorists and did nothing to prevent aggression against Daghestan on August 2, 1999. Moreover, continued General Manilov, he appointed Basayev commander-in-chief of one of his fronts. "He has always been and has never left the same boat with extremists," he added.


It was under Maskhadov rule that slave trade raged in Russia and Chechnya over 1996-1999, when 46,000 ethnic Chechens lived as slaves, over 20,000 non-Chechens were executed in accordance with Sharia law and many evicted from more than 100,000 houses and flats, noted Manilov.


The attempts by the West to force Russia to enter into talks with Maskhadov means "progress with your head turned backwards. "We are not going to sit down at the same negotiating table with thugs and terrorists on whose conscience are hundreds upon thousands of innocent victims," continued the Russian military commander. Though Maskhadov refers to Udugov, Basayev and the like as "nobody", he himself cannot influence the situation and rebels' choice in Chechnya

Former chief of the special section of the Chechen presidential administration Lom-Ali Vaisugorov on Monday surrendered to officers of the North Caucasus department for combating organised crime.


The Interior Ministry department for combating organised crime told Interfax on Tuesday that Vaisugorov surrendered two attack rifles and expressed a readiness to hand over the archives of his special section.


Vaisugorov is now being held by the North Caucasus department for combating organised crime and "documents related to him" has been submitted to the office of the Chechen Prosecutor.


"The possibility of applying the amnesty to him is being considered," militia representatives said.

Brief History

Thousands of Russian women and girls courageously fought for their Rodina (Motherland), serving with the Voyenno-Vozdushniye Sily (Air Forces, in Russian). In 1942, three air regiments were formed from female volunteers:

The 586th Women's Fighter Regiment (initially equipped with Yakovlyev YaK-1s and later YaK-7Bs)
The 587th Women's Day Bomber Regiment (flying Petlyakov Pe-2 2-engined bombers)
The 588th Women's Night Bomber Regiment, the famous "Night Witches" (flying Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes)
Many other women also served integrated with men with other aviation units. For example, in 1944, 1,749 girls served with Zabaikalsky Front, 3,000 women and girls served with the Far East 10th Air Army, 437 women served with the 4th Air Army of the Second Belorussian Front that comprised the crack 46th Guards Women Air Regiment that comprised 237 women-officers, 862 sergeants, 1,125 enlisted women and 2,117 auxiliaries. They also served flying and as gunners in the famous Il-2 and Il-2M3 Shturmovik tank busters, the "Flying Bathtub".

Women-pilots of female air regiments engaged in dogfights, cleared the way for the advancing infantry and supported them in ground support missions. The fighter pilots of the all-women 586th IAP (Russian abbreviation for Fighter Aviation Regiment, same as Fighter Air Regiment) flew a total of 4,419 sorties (per pilot) and participated in more than 125 separate air battles, in which they massed a total of 38 confirmed kills. That is, the sorties when the enemy was actually encountered.

Sexism in the V-VS was high initially, male pilots refusing to fly with women as "wingmen", or fly airplanes that had been repaired or serviced by women mechanics and ground crew. But the demonstrated, and often superior, courage and great skill of these female soldiers proved their better than average competence to fullfil their duty. The USSR highly praised the combat deeds of female pilots: thousands won orders and medals. 29 won titles of Hero of the Soviet Union. 23 of these went to the Night Witches.

I noticed MIR was mentioned. That space station is an incredable achevement. Yes there has been bad press with on-board fires and other problems but what many don't take into account it is way passed its original planned years of use, and the fact that it has been operational for so long is quite an achevement considering operating a space station is not as easy as taking care of the family ford. Remember what happened to America's own sky-lab, solar pannels failed to open, wrong orbit and an early demise when it broke appart over Australia when it was brought down.

..since we were talking about WWII.

New US radar site threatens ABM treaty

Julian Borger in Miami
Tuesday April 25, 2000
The Guardian

The United States was thrown on to the defensive as the UN nuclear disarmament talks began yesterday by allegations that it had installed a new anti-missile radar in northern Norway, a few miles from the Russian border.

Moscow has denounced the installation, believed to be the world's most advanced tracking and imaging radar, as a covert step towards the controversial US plan to develop a shield against incoming missiles, and therefore a potential breach of the 1972 anti-ballistic-missile (ABM) treaty.

"Everyone should be aware that the collapse of the ABM treaty would have a destructive domino effect for the existing system of disarmament agreements," the Russian foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, argued in yesterday's New York Times. "We would be back in an era of suspicion and confrontation."

The Norwegian government said the radar, in the border village of Vardo, was designed to keep an eye on potentially dangerous space debris, but that explanation was derided as implausible by several independent scientists.

The revelations emerged as talks began at the conference on the 1968 nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) at the UN's New York headquarters, and US-Russian talks on a new disarmament treaty, Start III, entered their second week in Geneva.

The US and the Russia have both been under fire from disarmament watchdogs for negotiating in bad faith. Both have opted to stockpile and upgrade - rather than destroy - the warheads they have removed from missile silos.

The Vardo radar could have an even more damaging impact on the already precarious east-west nuclear balance. It was built in 1995 and moved to Norway in 1998, according to the latest issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a US journal which monitors nuclear proliferation issues.

When a Norwegian journalist, Inge Sellevag, asked the Norwegian government the purpose of the new installation, he was told it was to be used by Nasa to monitor "space junk". But Nasa knew nothing about Vardo. John Pike, director of the Space Policy Project at the Federation of American Scientists, said yesterday: "One of the standard parts of creating a cover story for an intelligence operation is that the story is plausible and this cover story was not.

"This is a type of radar that was developed as part of the national missile defence [NMD] network, and I assume the reason they put it up there is to monitor Russian missile-testing."

The proposed NMD system is a successor to Ronald Reagan's Star Wars scheme. It is intended to create a nuclear umbrella over the US by coordinating an array of satellites, radars and missiles which would track and intercept any incoming missiles. Such a system is banned by the ABM treaty.

Tests on NMD technology are still under way and President Clinton has yet to give the system a green light, but the Vardo radar - along with the proposed upgrading of the early-warning radars at Fylingsdales in Yorkshire and Thule in Greenland - suggest that the Pentagon is already committed to the strategy.

Critics of the system believe the placing of the radars con firms that its main target is Russia, not rogue states like Iran, Iraq and North Korea as US officials have assured their counterparts in Moscow.

The Ministry of Defence's claim that the Fylingsdales radar was aimed at monitoring North Korea were dismissed by Mr Pike, who said: "Last time I checked England was on the other side of planet from North Korea. It might be a good place to hide from North Korea but not to watch it."

Meanwhile, US plans to upgrade its nuclear stockpile and develop "new nuclear options for emergent threats" were revealed in energy department documents made available to a court after a legal challenge by disarmament and environmental groups.

Greg Mello, director of one of the groups, the Los Alamos Study Group, said they revealed "a shocking disregard for US commitments, especially those enshrined in the NPT, to end the nuclear arms race."

"It's imperative that these plans be stopped. If we don't abide by the treaties we've signed, how can we get other countries to do so," he said.

Gonzo,
if you're interested..the second most important battle after Stalingrad and the GREATEST Tank battle EVER was the battle of Kursk..check it out:
http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/avenue/vy75/

Jake,
we are impressed with your tough act. I guess in your eyes you are a real man hiding behind your keyboard. Jake was that really a picture of you holding that sword. Dude when I looked up puss in the dictionary (or was that candy-ass)I found the exact same picture, what a coincidence. Can I please, please, please give you my address? I bet you were beat up everyday on the playground for being such a dork, weren't you, come on man, I mean boy, fess up?

Yep...Kursk. Plus Il-2 most produced aircraft of the war. One thing you can say about the germans the built some dam good tanks, probably the best of the war but in too few numbers. US tankers thought they had a dam good tank with the Sherman untill they got into combat and noticed there shells were bouncing off the sides of the Tigers.

"good place to hide from N. Korea, not a good place to watch it." thats funny but true. Personally I don't think Russia has anything to fear from America , plus I don't want the US to think it would ever be safe from a full scale nuke strike due to some gee-wiz hi-tec system. I don't think it is or would ever be.

"We chopped off their heads using a sword. We buried their bodies and heads,"
rebel spokesman Abu Ahmad said in a radio interview here.
"We decided to kill them because the group did not see any positive response
from the government," he said.
Ahmad said those who were beheaded were school teachers who were former soldiers
and that their decapitation was carried out at 3:20 p.m.at their jungle camp in
Basilan.
The Abu Sayyaf was holding 29 teachers, students and a Roman Catholic priest --
all Filipinos -

..."WE DO NOT KILL WOMEN. WE WILL JUST ENSLAVE THEM," he (Abu Ahmad)said.


http://sg.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/asia/article.html?s=singapore/headlines/000419/asia/afp/Military_ready_assault_after_Muslim_militants__behead__hostages.html

Russian tanks

www.history.enjoy.ru/outlines/t34_62.gif

better,
you know exactly how Jake is going to reply: "this has nothing to do with you...blah-blah-blah" he is ••••••• b-o-r-i-n-g, you know..


On that note I am going off line.


Oh yea, All American - I expect to hear your sorano-voice t-a-m-a-r-o(how's my spelling), here for some more beating. Loser. And biatch.

I am outta here also