Happy Women's Day!

For anyone reading this outside of Russia who might be unaware of the holiday, today is International Women's Day, a federal holiday here in Russia.

ORT (Channel 1) interrupted the special holiday presentation of the movie "Titanic" for a 9pm news brief to announce that Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov was "destroyed" today by Russian forces in Tolstoy-yurt. I am sure that appetites at more than one 8th of March feast were spoiled by the extensive footage of Maskhadov's body (turns out that "destroyed" is a polite way of saying "killed" - his body was very much intact, although pretty beaten up), in a pool of blood, from every conceivable angle.

The news brief continued with a classic bit of Channel 1 news - footage of a "private" meeting between President Putin and FSB head Nikolai Patrushev, at which Patrushev gave the big boss the good news that the hit on Maskhadov was successful. Putin was careful to say that participants in the operation today should receive medals if it was confirmed that they had really killed Maskhadov - to be honest, as much footage as they showed of the corpse, it wasn't clear to me that it was definitely him.

Then viewers were treated to more footage of the body, a brief live interview with military spokesman Ilya Shabalkin, and a retrospective of Chechen bad guys who have been successfully "destroyed" by Russian forces in the past decade, showing, in the ORT reporter's words, that "payback is unavoidable" ("возмездие неминуемо") for such terrorists.

It is amazing to me that such an outpouring of pride and chest-thumping can accompany the capture of a guy who has been wanted and has been successfully evading Russian forces within a small piece of Russia's own territory (Chechnya) for years. It is also unfortunate news for anyone who hopes for a negotiated settlement in Chechnya - in spite of his possible ties to international terrorists, inconsistent statements, and questionable control over the Chechen forces, Maskhadov was really the only person with whom sitting down for negotiations might have been conceivable. You can bet they won't be negotiating with Basayev...

Lenta.ru has an interesting related story - apparently Ramzan Kadyrov has come out with a statement that the intent was to capture Maskhadov and, after questioning, give him a lower-ranking position in the Kremlin-supported Chechen security service.

Here's Siberian Light's coverage of the breaking story on Maskhadov's death (or "destruction," or perhaps "liquidation," if you'd rather hew to the doublespeak preferred by warriors on terrorism worldwide).

On an unrelated note, apologies for the long break between entries - I have a lot of good material stored up, some of which is getting stale (e.g., photos from the polling station at the Moldovan consulate in Moscow last Sunday), and I hope to be more active this week, so stay tuned - last week was occupied with visits from my sister-in-law, mother-in-law, and mother, plus a quick trip up to St. Petersburg, so there was not much time for anything else.

OK, now I really must go catch the surprising and unexpected conclusion to "Titanic."