…BUT WAR HAS NOT STOPPED.

Russia’s command in Chechnya claimed overnight to have captured the Chechen stronghold Bamut, but the claim could not be immediately corroborated. Russian officers on the ground and the Duma’s security committee chairman Viktor Ilyukhin said yesterday that 70 Russian soldiers were killed and scores wounded in the last two days in Bamut. The Russian general staff’s chief spokesman, Lt. General Andrei Ivanov told a Kremlin briefing yesterday that groups of armed teenagers are joining the resistance; and read a list of Chechen villages in the heart of nominally Russian-controlled territory where resistance detachments operate freely and the residents are hoisting flags of independent Chechnya. (Russian agencies, May 23 and 24)

Election Official, Communists Swap Accusations over Vote-Rigging…