EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the third installment of our series from Dave Essel translating the latest issue of the Nemtsov White Paper condemning the Putin years. The first installment is here, the second is here, and the prior issues are here. Video of Nemtsov and Milov at the press release is here.
PUTIN: What 10 Years of Putin Have Brought
An independent expert report by
Vladimir Milov and Boris Nemtsov
Translated from the Russian by Dave Essel
CHAPTER FOUR: Dead End in the Caucasus
The Caucasus has played a key part in raising Putin to Olympian political heights. Immediately after he was appointed prime-minister in 1999, Putin initiated military engagements against Chechen separatists and memorably promised to “slaughter them in their outhouses” [TN: the Russian phrase “zamochit v sortire” is intended to sound crude but does not really have much meaning – I would have gone for “drown them in their own sh*t” in a literary translation. This manner of speech is much more “Putin”.] Riding the terrorism wave, Putin got the support of a large number of people and became president in Spring 2000.
For the rest of the decade, the myth has carefully been cultivated that Putin pacified the Caucasus and beat the terrorists. In 2007, Putin declared that “ international terrorists’ aggression has been stopped in its tracks thanks to the courage and unity of the people of Russia.”
Quite the opposite, however, is true. Below you will find a table listing numbers of acts of terrorism over the last decade. This table has been assembled by us from data officially promulgated by spokesmen for law enforcement and the specials services.
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