AMNESTY GENERATES SKEPTICISM

Why have so few rebel guerrillas taken advantage of the amnesty offered by the Putin administration? The experience of one village in the southern highlands is revealing.

Zulai Visingirieva, head of the village of Ulus-Kert, persuaded all the young men in the community who had links with the guerrillas to turn themselves in at the local office of the Federal Security Service (FSB). But as reported on August 14 by the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting, “instead of getting amnesties, five were charged with crimes and four of those were detained. Visingirieva advised her counterparts in other villages not to act as she had done.”