Chechen Interior Minister Tries to Play Down the Insurgency - The Jamestown Foundation

Chechen Interior Minister Tries to Play Down the Insurgency - The Jamestown Foundation: "It is worth noting that the news reports issued by the media outlets of the Chechen militants provide more figures about the police officers and servicemen from the Russian armed forces killed in Chechnya. Still, it is possible to infer even from the information provided by the Russian mass media that the number of Chechen police casualties as imagined by Chechen Interior Minister Alkhanov. For instance, five representatives of the law-enforcement authorities were killed and 22 were wounded in Chechnya over the last month alone. The figures for those who were killed do not include civilians, who were assassinated by the militants for their collaboration with the pro-Moscow police: if you add them in, the true number of people killed in the republic over the past month is 12. (These numbers are based on Russian mass media reports during the month of November.) In other words, nine years since the start of combat actions in Chechnya, the number of killed and wounded has remained approximately the same as before. That is why to talk of success in Chechnya still remains a stretch of the imagination."