Chechnya’s Interior Ministry says rebel fighters killed 159 pro-Moscow police in 2003 - roughly three per week.
| ... or one every other day. |
Another 300 officers were wounded in ambushes and clashes said ministry spokesman Ruslan Atsayev, quoted by the Itar-Tass agency. He added that the death toll was one-third lower than in 2002, and that people were keen to work as policemen. Another official said some 20 attacks within the last 24 hours killed five Russian soldiers and a police officers. The official told the AP agency that the attacks included direct stikes on Russian positions as well as ambushes on military and police convoys. Mr Atsayev was quoted by Itar-Tass as saying that payments to dead policemen’s families totalled more than one million roubles per month in the first 11 months of 2003. Russian forces have been assaulted on an almost daily basis since they re-entered Chechnya in 1999, three years after rebels drove them out. The official figure for the number of Russian soldiers who died in Chechnya between 1999 and mid-2003 is 4,705 - though the Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia organisation put the figure at 11,000.
| It's a meat grinder. I attribute the high casualty rates to either crummy intel or to poor integration of intel resources, likely the former. If I was Putin — which I'm not; he's shorter than I am, for one thing — I'd be asking my good friend G.W. for a bit of assistance in that area. |
|