PUTIN ADVOCATES CHECHENIZATION…

Over the past week-and-a-half, the Putin leadership seems to have moved from an advocacy of the need for “Chechenization” of the conflict to a retreat from it. On April 30, speaking at a session of the Russian Security Council, the Russian president made it clear that, in the future, the leadership of the counterterrorist operation in Chechnya would be assumed by the pro-Moscow MVD of the republic (NTVru.com, April 30). Similarly, the Russian minister for internal affairs, Boris Gryzlov, announced during a call-in program (the transcript of which appeared in the April 30 issue of Komsomolskaya Pravda) that “by October 1 of this year an MVD of Chechnya will be created on the foundation of fifteen district departments of internal affairs.” By that date, Gryzlov emphasized, the pro-Moscow Chechen police would number 10,800 persons, 30 percent of them contract workers drawn from other areas of Russia and 70 percent local inhabitants.