[jaguar]

bluesdaves, thankyou for displaying some truly awe inspiring ignorance about post-soviet eastern European geopolitics or for that matter, any kind of independence movement anywhere, the roots of pretty much any terrorist movement in history or hell - pretty much all history now I think of it. Your combined lack of understanding of chechen history, Russia's reasoning behind the ongoing conflict, the role of strategic resources and the history and structure of the chechen rebel movement is sadly not unique in it's awesome lack of understanding.

The most interesting thing though is the demonstration about the role of media illusions, nervous, often drunk russian conscripts can waste kids and noone will ever hear about it but as soon as the chechen rebels take the flight to Moscow they've 'lost the moral battle'? Who the fuck are you kidding, there is no moral battle, there never was, you think morals worried the russians? Welcome to the majority of today's battlegrounds, dirty, unfair, horrible, inhuman and entirely free of media spotlight except when something 'newsworthy' like this happens. Keep in mind too that the FSB (KGB with a new nametag) was behind many if not all the apartment bombings attributed to the chechen rebels.

The only people left in that god forsaken hellhole now are rebels and people that couldn't leave - the sick, the elderly, who have been subject to general brutalisation by an army consisting mostly of nervous 17y.o conscripts, drunk and unpaid and hardass specops that would be more at home in the SS.