Shamil Basayev: downing 2 Russian planes costs US$4000

Chechen Warlord Basayev Says Beslan Siege Cost 8000 Euros

It really doesn't take millions to launch a mass murder terrorist campaign in Russia. With human lives so cheap, Shamil Basayev doesn't have to be a heir to Bin Laden Construction Group (or even a subsidiary of such a heir), to keep his bloody business running.

Of course, providing funding for terror attacks does not top the long list of Chechen warlord's expenditures.
It's a safe guess, that he spends a fortune on not being caught.

For five years Russian army and Russian intelligence have been listing Basayev's capture among its top priorities.
In 2005 they will receive an extra RUR 157bln (US$ 5.37bln) from the national budget to boost these fruitless efforts.
Still, Basayev feels as free as ever to dispatch suicide bombers to Moscow, to send troops into Grozny and Nazran', to take kids hostage, and to post his boastful memoirs on the Web, without any trace of fear and remorse.

I wonder, how much this immunity costs him - in payments to Russian military and security top brass - that even a reward of $10mln for any information on his whereabouts remains unclaimed in our poor country.

Gorbie and Yeltsin Unite In Criticism of Putin's Initiatives

Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin Speak out Against Putin's Reforms

Both Yeltsin and Gorbachev still tend to view Moscow News weekly as their tribune of choice — a reputation, earned by this newspaper some 18 years ago, at the dawn of perestroika, when this paper, unavailable to the masses, used to hold a nationwide monopoly on free speech. 10 years later, when people in Russia got almost terminally fed up with truth and free speech, Moscow News Russian edition was reduced to near-oblivion. IMHO, were this weekly closed due to the 1998 financial crisis, no one would have seriously minded. Except for Yeltsin and Gorbachev, naturally.

These days, with Putin trying to reestablish the Soviet regime in all its deafness and muteness, there is suddenly a new hope for this publication. Yeltsin and Gorbachev have just proved that.

It Takes $34.22 to Blow up a Russian Airplane

The two Chechen ladies, who caused the double plane crash on August 24, had to bribe a score of Russian officials to get on board.

First, they both were detained by the airport police for routine security check. "Security check" is a popular form of extortion among Moscow's 145.000 underpaid cops: they stop anyone suspect of not being the capital's resident, and start harrassing him under all sorts of pretexts, until he pays. The terrorists paid quickly (we will never know, how much it cost them, but usually it's RUR150,-/US$5), and proceeded to bribe airline official to get on board. This time the bribe was RUR1000,-, or $34.22 by today's exchange rate.

Moscow being one of the most expensive cities in the world, human life is still dirt cheap here.

Court Finds Vet Guilty of Illegal Ketamine Use

Court Finds Vet Guilty of Illegal Ketamine Use, Orders No Punishment

One more chapter in the neverending Ketamine saga.
The point is pretty simple: instead of putting up any serious fight against drug traffic and abuse, especially in heroin, Russia's drug enforcement agency, the Gosnarkokontrol, headed by Putin's ex-KGB crony Mr. Cherkesov, stages spectacular but useless showdowns on individual vets, using Ketamine for operations on cats and dogs.

It's perfectly clear to anyone involved in this witch hunt, that none of those veterinars was ever involved in illegal drug trafficking (neither were they ever charges with selling that substance to human addicts). If the authorities were ever planning to eradicate Ketamine use by humans in Russia, they should go after actual dealers and smugglers, not vets. But this is the typical KGB-style handling of problems - reporting activities is far more important, than any tangible results.

322 Killed in N.Ossetian Seized School

The actual death toll is likely to reach 600 people, sources in Beslan estimate.
The figure, given so far by the officials, seems not to include those corpses, that the rescue teams are evacuating during Saturday works in the school debris. Obviously this estimate also disregards rescued hostages, now dying in hospitals. Putting all these figures together, we come up with some 530 dead, and locals, cited by Gazeta.Ru, estimate, that the effective toll should be ~600.

Wish they were exaggerating.

Up to 150 Hostages Killed in N.Ossetia

Up to 150 Hostages Killed in N.Ossetia

Russian troops stormed the school building in Beslan, North Ossetia. Not less than 12 terrorists fled the building unharmed, staged a gunfight in the streets of Beslan, and then disappeared, leaving 5 of their comrades dead (the total number of attackers was originally estimated at 17, 4 of them women). This is the only casualties' figure confirmed so far. Nothing is known about the number of dead and wounded among both hostages and federal forces, engaged in the rescue effort.

It's perfectly clear, that from now on the authorities' main task will be to hide real figures from the public.
From Dubrovka experience we know, that 129 dead should be considered a victory, and in this case even 150 will be proclaimed a good result. But this figure should emerge someday in the remote future - a week, two weeks from the storming date, when people start forgetting.

In the Dubrovka case, to arrive to the final number of 129 killed (contested by the media, but still official), the authorities started citing 10 dead, then 30, then 60... This was an outright and blatant lie from the start, according to those involved in corpses' evacuation: some 100 corpses were removed from the theatre site before the figure of 10 dead was ever named.

Now we see repetition of same scenario. Any casualties are classified information, and any leaks thereof are carefully dozed. 150 dead — the estimate that only Radio Free Europe dared to voice, of all Russian-speaking media — is semiofficially confirmed at the moment at the rescue HQ. Which obviously means it's a gross understatement.

At the moment, over 328 hostages were hospitalized. But we are told, that they tend to hospitalized everyone who is rescued. And the total number of people, who were held in the school building, remains undisclosed.

Under Siege School May Hold as Many as 1500 Hostages

Official number of hostages is underestimated by a factor of 4

Lenta.Ru sources in the EmerCom had said it yesterday. 1500 (or 1020) instead of 354 officially acknowledged.
The worst part of it is that this estimate makes perfect sense.
With 880 pupils attending the school in question, how on Earth could it happen, that only 132 kids were taken hostage, as the officials originaly suggested?
Should that mean, that only 1 out of 7 pupils did attend school on September 1st?
Were the authorities implying, that they were able to locate all of the 748 schoolchildren who failed to show up for studies?

In any case, the authorities were lying, as Ruslan Aushev has just confirmed, and it's highly improbable, that this sort of lie was meant to help the rescue efforts. Rather it was just one more coverup, which means the following math. Rescue operation is expected to produce some 350 live hostages, and no one would allow counting corpses of those left behind.

Great minds out there.
Yuck.

Hostage-Takers Free Women With Infants

Hostage-Takers Free Women With Infants

Suddenly some good news from North Ossetia, where Ingushetia's ex-president, Ruslan Aushev (ousted years ago by Putin to make way for KGB veteran Zyazikov, now holding the post) emerged out of nowhere as the most succesful negotiator of the day. Not only did Aushev talk the terrorists into freeing 26 hostages in a surprise move, his team also promises more hostages freed in hours to come. Zyazikov, whom the terrorists demanded to see, seems to have failed to appear at the negotiations' table. Ditto for North Ossetia president Dzasokhov. Doctor Roshal, of Dubrovka fame, spends hours talking to terrorists, but so far he could only manage to get them accept some water into the building. Which is strange, since the building does have a functioning water supply system.

Vladimir Putin suddenly said today (talking to King Abdallah II) that the hostages' lives are top priority for those involved in the rescue effort. One has to wonder, what this could have meant, with guesses ranging from calm-down rhetorics to hints of possible concession to terrorists, which I personally would find somewhat hard to believe.

Officials in the rescue team headquarters did repeat a number of times, that the school building wasn't going to be stormed by Russian troops. But this promise is quite predictable, what else could they say.

Gunmen Take Over 200 Hostages in North Ossetia School

Gunmen Take Over 200 Hostages in North Ossetia School

We've seen it happen back there in Dubrovka theatre.
Now we're living through all of it again.

The terrorists — detestable, unhuman creatures, may God strike them down, but there is one thing we know for sure. They didn't come for the money, like their Palestinian colleagues in the 1970s and the 1980s. They didn't come there to negotiate a Russian pullout from Chechnya, since they've got no one to talk to on this subject. They came there to die, and die they will, it's only a matter of hours. And they know it, and they are prepared to it, as were their predecessors in the Nord-Ost showdown.

The very point of Dubrovka hostage-taking in October 2002 was to provoke a mass tragedy in the middle of Moscow, without actually killing anyone in the process. They had all the time in the world to blow up the building (gas was pumped at least for a couple of hours before the storming), but they did not press the button. Because they wanted Russian troops to do the job. But Russian troops only killed 129 people, instead of 900, and this was sold to the general audience as a brilliant victory, a triumphant rescue effort, given the alternatives.

Now, the North Ossetia school attackers are taking no chances in Beslan. They planted bombs in the schoolyard, reducing, inter alia, their own chances of escape. They seriously expect everybody within that school building to die, when troops begin storming it. Authorities seem to be aware of this plot, so suddenly there are some efforts at negotiations. Unfortunately, it's difficult to see what's there to negotiate after all. And siloviki would rather sacrifice all children of both North and South Ossetia, than concede such a defeat five years into the latest Chechnya campaign, as pulling any troops out. Unless we're overlooking something here, storming is quite inevitable. And it's better not to think about its possible outcome, given the terrorists' determination to die for their cause.