Word: russian
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...Heavy fighting between Russian troops and Chechen fighters on Thursday offers a timely assist for President Vladimir Putin's efforts to convince the UN Security Council that Russia faces a dangerous threat from Georgian territory. What is taking place...
...Several hundred well-armed Chechens - as well-armed if not better than the Russian troops they're facing - are fighting a large Russian unit around the village of Galashki in Ingushetiya. The Chechens have brought down a M-24 Hind helicopter gunship, and inflicted quite a few casualties on the Russians. The numbers are rising, and although Russia early on claimed to have lost 10 men and killed 30 Chechen fighters, our experience in covering this conflict suggests that the claims of each side tend to double enemy casualties and halve their own. So, it's a major battle...
...lawless Pankisi Valley where the government has no control, but it's safe to assume the government knew what was happening. There's a lot of sympathy for the Chechen rebels in Georgia, a former Soviet Republic whose leaders have been trying to move out of the Russian orbit and closer to the West. And of course that, and not simply rebel infiltration, is the source of Moscow's hostility to Georgia's government...
...President Putin harbors a deep, visceral dislike of Georgia's President Eduard Shevardnadze. Russian leaders blame him for his key role - while serving as Gorbachev's foreign minister in the late 1980s - in the breakup of the Soviet Union, its retreat from Eastern Europe, and Georgia's move into the NATO orbit. Russians feel that control over Georgia is their birthright and also a vital component of their own security...
...Thursday the Russians were hinting very strongly that the latest fighting is the final straw. On Friday the tone seems to have calmed a little. Georgia is expecting retaliation, and not just in the Pankisi Gorge. That might be bombed a couple of times, but there's not much there except a few sheep. Instead, the Georgians expect a Russian military operation to break Georgia's grip on the Kodori Valley. Several pieces of Georgia have been nibbled away by Russian-backed separatist insurgencies since Georgia broke from the Soviet Union. The most independently-minded region is Abkhazia, to which...