https://www.viexpo.com/second-chechen-war/archive-through-february-3-2000/ Disaster Message Service Discussion Board en-US Thu, 30 Apr 2026 00:14:53 +0000 wpForo 60 https://www.viexpo.com/second-chechen-war/archive-through-february-3-2000/paged/9/#post-16990 Fri, 04 Feb 2000 03:47:00 +0000 http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000202/pl/yugoslavia_usa_3.html]]> Second Chechen War igor https://www.viexpo.com/second-chechen-war/archive-through-february-3-2000/paged/9/#post-16990 https://www.viexpo.com/second-chechen-war/archive-through-february-3-2000/paged/9/#post-16989 Fri, 04 Feb 2000 02:43:00 +0000 well, we had our "pedophile" phase a couple weeks
ago, and today we've had the "golden showers"
phase. yeesh and a half -_-
aside from the fact that these are drastically
off-topic, one shudders to think of what else will
follow. bestiality? cannibalism as a team sport?

graffiti on a bathroom wall. wash the wall. new
graffiti appears.repeat.]]> Second Chechen War L'menexe https://www.viexpo.com/second-chechen-war/archive-through-february-3-2000/paged/9/#post-16989 https://www.viexpo.com/second-chechen-war/archive-through-february-3-2000/paged/9/#post-16988 Fri, 04 Feb 2000 02:34:00 +0000 http://www.globecartoon.com/chapp/Afghanistan.html]]> Second Chechen War igor https://www.viexpo.com/second-chechen-war/archive-through-february-3-2000/paged/9/#post-16988 https://www.viexpo.com/second-chechen-war/archive-through-february-3-2000/paged/9/#post-16987 Fri, 04 Feb 2000 02:30:00 +0000 http://www.inthesetimes.com/edit2406.html I predict right wing death squads will be on the rise.]]> Second Chechen War igor https://www.viexpo.com/second-chechen-war/archive-through-february-3-2000/paged/9/#post-16987 https://www.viexpo.com/second-chechen-war/archive-through-february-3-2000/paged/9/#post-16986 Fri, 04 Feb 2000 02:27:00 +0000

Rivals make way for new government


In an encouraging sign that the building of Kosovo as an autonomous state is taking shape, Dr Ibrahim Rugova, the province's moderate leader, said he had dissolved the "Republic of Kosovo" and its government, which he headed.

By abolishing one of two competing self-declared Kosovar governments, the move allows for the creation of a new administration that will include Dr Rugova's supporters and representatives of the former ethnic Albanian militia, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).

It will gradually take over the functions at present exercised by the interim United Nations administration in Kosovo.

The rival government to Dr Rugova's, headed by Mr Hashim Thaci, commander of the KLA, had already been dissolved in keeping with a UN requirement that all parallel governments be dissolved by the end of January.

The plan is for a unified government to be elected, probably in the northern autumn.

Dr Rugova proclaimed his Kosovo republic in 1990, after Serbia revoked the autonomous status of its southern province.

The scrapping of the "republic", as part of plans for a new administration involving former guerillas and opposition leaders, is a key part of the West's peacekeeping strategy for the province.

Dr Rugova also declared himself ready to discuss the handover of his administration's funds to UN peacekeepers. These are believed to amount to the equivalent of about $A200million.

But it was reported that Kosovo's Serbs are refusing to join the new joint administration.

Meanwhile, attackers have fired an anti-tank rocket at a UN bus with 49 Kosovo Serbs on board, killing two elderly people and wounding three other passengers, international authorities said.

The attack drew expressions of outrage from officials of the United Nations and the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force.

---

WISHFUL THINKING.NEXT HOTSPOT JUNE 2000]]> Second Chechen War igor https://www.viexpo.com/second-chechen-war/archive-through-february-3-2000/paged/9/#post-16986 https://www.viexpo.com/second-chechen-war/archive-through-february-3-2000/paged/8/#post-16985 Fri, 04 Feb 2000 01:53:00 +0000
by Robert J.
Samuelson

• Periscope
• Letters
• Perspectives
• Interview



RUSSIA
Mothers And Sons

As the Russian death count mounts in Chechnya, the parents of
young conscripts are fighting their own battle: they want to avoid
sending their boys off to die in a seemingly endless war

By Bill Powell
February 7, 2000

Yekaterina Zhadova sensed trouble late last summer when she didn't receive
a letter from her 19-year-old son for more than a month. Nikolai had been
conscripted into the Russian Army in June 1998 and had corresponded
frequently from a base not far from his home in Arzamas, a city of more than
100,000 about 400 kilometers east of Moscow. He had lived there with his
parents in a large, bleak complex of apartment buildings called "Microdistrict
Number 11.'' The fact that he had stopped writing "scared us,'' says his
mother. By mid-September, Russia's latest Chechen war was gathering force.
Troops were in neighboring Dagestan, and soon were rolling into Chechnya
itself. That is what Yekaterina Zhadova was afraid of. On Sept. 24, when she
finally got a letter from Nikolai, concern turned to panic. The postmark was
Voronezh, a southwestern town that lies along the route to the northern
Caucuses. Nikolai wrote that he was participating in "military exercises.'' His
mother didn't believe it. "That's when I realized," she says, "he was on his way
to Chechnya.''

When Zhadova's neighbor in Microdistrict Number 11, Antonina Tsurkan,
received a telegram on Jan. 4, she didn't think much of it. So little, in fact, that
she, a widow with five children, didn't read it right away. Her youngest son,
Andrei, 19, had been in the Army since November 1998, posted with an elite
Spetsnaz unit outside Moscow. Antonina figured the telegram was from
Andrei saying he was coming home for a vacation. In one of his more recent
letters he said his unit had helped "pick and store vegetables" in the
countryside—routine duty for Russian troops. Another letter, dated Nov. 19,
arrived in early December. It said his duty "was going well—even great, if I
may say it—so don't worry." Her son said she should continue writing letters
to him addressed to his base outside Moscow, and they will be delivered "to
where I am now." Then, writing that he had "no time" to produce a longer
letter, Andrei said to his mother and the two of his four siblings still living at
home: "I love you all. Goodbye. See you soon. Your son, Andrei." And then,
just below: "Don't worry about me, Mother. Bye." They were the last words
he would ever write to her. When Antonina finally opened the telegram on
Jan. 4, she learned that Andrei had been killed in Chechnya on Dec. 29.

Chechnya is Vladimir Putin's war. And now, with Russian troops bogged
down in a fierce fight over control of Grozny, it is coming home. Last week,
for the first time, Russian media openly questioned the military's official
casualty count. Acting President Putin's public support has, according to one
reputable polling agency, begun to erode, falling from a 54 percent approval
rating to 49 percent—the first ever dip for the man who hopes to be elected
president in his own right on March 26. In Arzamas—home to three young
men killed so far in the Chechen war—and others towns like it across Russia,
parents with soldier sons are petrified that soon they will receive the kind of
telegram Antonina Tsurkan did last month. Some, in desperate response, try
to find ways to get their sons back. Most fail.

Most, but not all. When Yekaterina Zhadova figured out in September that
Nikolai was in Chechnya, her first stop was the nearest branch of the
Soldiers' Mothers' Committee, one of the few effective antiwar groups in
Russia. During the last war the Mothers' Committee had effectively pressured
the military to account for soldiers either missing in action or kidnapped in
Chechnya. At the office in Nizhny Novgorod, about 110 kilometers north of
Arzamas, the chairwoman told Zhadova to go to the committee's Moscow
headquarters for advice. She borrowed some money from friends and
did—even though her husband thought it was a fool's errand. In Moscow,
another committee representative told her: go to Mozdok, the main Russian
staging base for the Chechen campaign; talk to the officers in charge; do what
you can.

In the early days of the war, a handful of mothers had successfully
cajoled—or bribed—military officials to spring their sons from Mozdok. By
the time Zhadova checked into a women's dormitory near the base in
October, the military was cracking down. She says she was routinely
harassed by "political officers'' at the base who "tried to get rid of me.'' She
persisted. "You can get rid of me,'' she said to one official, "after I see my
son. But I am not going to leave this place until I do.'' Every day for two
weeks she appeared at the office of a commander at Mozdok, a man whom
Zhadova does not want to name because, in the end, he broke under her
relentless persistence. One day she showed up outside his office and asked
again to see him. He wasn't in. Where was he, she asked. Gone, an assistant
replied icily, "to get your son."

On the evening of Oct. 13, a bewildered Nikolai arrived in Mozdok and was
taken to see his mother; both were told he would be returning to Chechnya on
the 15th. That night, Yekaterina did not tell her son what she was up to. But in
her bag she had his civilian clothes and his passport. The next day, she told
him. "I've come not just to see you, but to take you back home with me."

The long train ride to Moscow was tense. Several times police asked
passengers for identification documents; not knowing whether the military was
already looking for Nikolai—now officially a deserter—"we were telling
ourselves to stay calm," Zhadova says. "But we were really nervous." Once
they got to Arzamas, the Mothers' Committee representative in Nizhny
Novgorod advised Zhadova to explain the situation to the local military
prosecutor—and to ask that Nikolai be assigned anywhere other than
Chechnya. Zhadova agreed, albeit warily. "Thank God," she says, that when
she and Nikolai met with the prosecutor, "he acted like a normal human
being." He asked Nikolai what he wanted. His reply: "To serve somewhere
else."

In Russia, desertion is punishable by up to seven years of prison. Not for
lucky Nikolai. He was reassigned, to a base in Mulino, about 600 kilometers
from Arzamas. He could, conceivably, be sent back again to Chechnya, but
for now he sits at home, safe and warm, having broken his hand in late
December.

About a month after Nikolai returned to Arzamas, his mother and Antonina
Tsurkan met, for the first time, as they were walking to their apartments.
Zhadova told Tsurkan her story. Antonina was unimpressed. She didn't
realize then that her own son was in Chechnya, and besides, she says, "I have
three sons, and all served in the military. I've always thought it was their duty
to defend the motherland. Before, when we were young, we wouldn't even
date guys who had not been to the Army."

Andrei Tsurkan had not known Nikolai, but he did know a young man named
Aleksei Spirin; they had been in the same first-grade class in Arzamas. Like
Tsurkan, Spirin had also been drafted in November 1998, and less than a
year later was headed for Chechnya. In contrast to Andrei, who hid the truth
from his mother, Spirin gave vent to his fears in a letter his parents received on
Sept. 27. "Maybe this is the last time I will write to you. We will go to
Dagestan to fight... just pray that I will be OK. I don't know what else to
write, I have no words; I am really nervous... Maybe we will see each other
again... Goodbye. Kisses. I love you with all my heart."

When Sergei Spirin, Aleksei's father, received that letter from his only child,
he and his wife, Antonina, were stunned. Aleksei had a chronic blood
problem, and had recently been hospitalized in Podolsk, a town outside
Moscow near where his unit was stationed. He also had terrible eyesight. "He
wanted to be a construction worker but his sight was so bad he wasn't
accepted to any vocational school," his father says.

Nor, according to his father, had Aleksei received any combat training.
Before going to Chechnya he was assigned to the "boiler crew" that supplies
heat and hot water to the unit. "The only day he ever held a gun was the day
," his father says. Furious at his son's plight, Sergei took all
of Aleksei's medical records to Podolsk and tried to convince officers there
that they had made a big mistake. He did not have Yekaterina Zhadova's
luck. A master sergeant "tore up the documents" he had brought and "threw
them in the toilet." On Oct. 27, 1999, rebel fighters attacked the post in
Chechnya that Aleksei Spirin was defending, and killed him.

Arzamas, says local journalist Nadezhda Atrova, is "in a state of shock." And
not just because their sons have begun to die, but because the conscipts now
in Chechnya seem so pathetically unfit for battle. Aleksei Viktorovich Karpov
served as a warrant officer in the Army for seven years. Now an electrician,
he says he always raised his son, Roman, to "be prepared to serve in the
Army." Inducted, like Spirin and Tsurkan, on Nov. 19, 1998, Roman
Karpov, the only child of Aleksei and his wife Galina, had taken target
practice just twice. "And he missed the target both times," his father says. On
Christmas Eve, Roman was shot three times in the chest while manning a
checkpoint in the Chechen city of Gudermes.

"I don't understand these people who unleashed this massacre where our kids
die," Aleksei says, weeping. "They are not human. There is a political motive
for this. Nobody attacked us. And we sent our sons there... Now we are left
alone. Our life has stopped." Until last week neither Aleksei nor his wife had
heard of Yekaterina Zhadova's success in spiriting her son away from the war
that has claimed their son. Choking with grief, he considers her tale, and then
simply says, "Well done—I support her."

The three 19-year-old boys from Arzamas now lie next to each other in a
cemetery across a shallow ravine from Microdistrict Number 11. All three
graves are marked by polished black headstones bearing their likenesses.
Early last Wednesday morning it was 19 below zero in Arzamas. The Spirins
and Galina Karpova were tending their sons' graves; they brought orange
slices and biscuits to lay on top of them. To Orthodox Christians, the spirits
are alight in the morning and need to be fed. A wisp of frost had obscured
part of Roman Karpov's image on his gravestone. His mother, Galina, bent
over and rubbed at it and rubbed at it, sobbing all the while. "My son," she
cried, "my son. You got so cold, oh, God, you got so cold."

Across the ravine from the cemetery, Nikolai Zhadov waits to report back for
duty in Mulino. His mother says she will go there first to argue that he doesn't
need to return; to argue that according to the law his two months in combat
plus his service before that fulfills his commitment to the Army. Her powers of
persuasion are obvious enough. "Maybe we'll know something after she
goes," Nikolai says hopefully, as his grandmother prepares him a hot lunch.
As she does so, over and over she says, "We just don't ever want him to go
back."]]> Second Chechen War poormothers https://www.viexpo.com/second-chechen-war/archive-through-february-3-2000/paged/8/#post-16985 https://www.viexpo.com/second-chechen-war/archive-through-february-3-2000/paged/8/#post-16984 Fri, 04 Feb 2000 01:31:00 +0000 Second Chechen War walex https://www.viexpo.com/second-chechen-war/archive-through-february-3-2000/paged/8/#post-16984 https://www.viexpo.com/second-chechen-war/archive-through-february-3-2000/paged/8/#post-16983 Fri, 04 Feb 2000 01:30:00 +0000 good night everyone.]]> Second Chechen War dimitri https://www.viexpo.com/second-chechen-war/archive-through-february-3-2000/paged/8/#post-16983 https://www.viexpo.com/second-chechen-war/archive-through-february-3-2000/paged/8/#post-16982 Fri, 04 Feb 2000 01:22:00 +0000 Second Chechen War walex https://www.viexpo.com/second-chechen-war/archive-through-february-3-2000/paged/8/#post-16982 https://www.viexpo.com/second-chechen-war/archive-through-february-3-2000/paged/8/#post-16981 Fri, 04 Feb 2000 01:15:00 +0000 Second Chechen War igor https://www.viexpo.com/second-chechen-war/archive-through-february-3-2000/paged/8/#post-16981