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Tuesday, 18 October 2005

RUSSIAN GENERALS/LAWMAKERS ARGUE OVER NALCHIK RAID

Published in News Digest

By empty (10/18/2005 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Colonel General Vladimir Vasiliev (Unified Russia), the chairman of the Duma Security Committee, said on 16 October on the NTV show \"Voskresnyi vecher\" that during the recent attacks by insurgents in Nalchik the federal troops reacted better than they had in previous attacks. Army General Nikolai Kovalev, the chairman of the Duma Veterans Committee (Unified Russia), said that it is difficult to fight underground urban guerilla warfare. \"During the day these people are normal citizens, but at night they change clothes, take up hidden arms, form small mobile groups, hit their targets, and then transform into civilians,\" he said.
Colonel General Vladimir Vasiliev (Unified Russia), the chairman of the Duma Security Committee, said on 16 October on the NTV show \"Voskresnyi vecher\" that during the recent attacks by insurgents in Nalchik the federal troops reacted better than they had in previous attacks. Army General Nikolai Kovalev, the chairman of the Duma Veterans Committee (Unified Russia), said that it is difficult to fight underground urban guerilla warfare. \"During the day these people are normal citizens, but at night they change clothes, take up hidden arms, form small mobile groups, hit their targets, and then transform into civilians,\" he said. Major General Aleksei Sigutkin (Unified Russia), the first deputy chairman of the Duma Defense Committee, said Russia has a history of failing to stop urban terrorist tactics. He said that \"in the 19th century the Tsarist secret police failed for a long time to suppress the revolutionary organization People\'s Will\" and, in the 20th century, the Tsarist police lost the fight to the Bolsheviks, which used the same tactics. Vladimir Solovev, the host of the NTV show \"Voskresnyi vecher,\" said that whatever security experts say, the U.S., British, and Spanish special services managed -- after terrorist attacks in their countries -- to prevent a repetition of them, though their Russian counterparts have been unable to prevent them from occurring. Most terrifying is that in Nalchik the attackers had a chance to seize planes at the airport, to load them with explosives, and take control of the \"friend and foe\" system which would lead them to their targets, he said. (RFE/RL)
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