_emma_ wrote:
But what else can they do? They don't have a proper army. They don't have tanks. They don't even have their own government to speak for their rights.
Did you hear what one of the hostages, who managed to escape on Thursday, say - she said she'd asked one of the terrorists/freedom fighters* why they were using innocent children to try to achieve their aims, and he'd answered: when my children were slaughtered, no one asked me questions.
Just how much do we know about Chechnya?
As for the blow up, I'm prone to believe it was the Russians who did it, just as they did in Dubrovka.
One thing that's certain: if Chechnyans' demands are not met, there will be more such tragedies. But Putin doesn't care, his nation is big enough, 200 people more or less doesn't make much difference.
*delete as you wish
What do we know about Chechnya? Well, it has three or four variant spellings, which doesn't help, but this is my (limited) understanding.
It's one of dozens of republics which make up the Russian Federation. Other ones you may have heard of include North Ossetia, Siberia, Karelia, Tatarstan etc. These are not to be confused with former Soviet republics of which there are 15, including Russia, which are now independent nation states. A Russian republic is effectively a province of the Russian nation.
Many of these, Chechnya included, want to be independent from Moscow. In Kazan there is a politically active independence movement seeking a separate Tartarstan, and parts of Siberia have declared themselves independent since 1991, but no-one paid any attention (it's worth remembering that in the early years of the 20th century a suspected meteorite strike destroyed 1,000 square miles of Siberian forest and it took about five years before anyone realised - it's a big place!).
The Chechen rebels installed their own government in the mid-90s and were met with crushing military force from Moscow (sent by Yeltsin). When I was in Russia people asked me why the assault on Grozny was morally different from British troops on the streets of Belfast. In crude terms, the British forces didn't unleash a barrage of heavy artillery or air strikes against Belfast: quite a significant change of approach, but hard to explain tactfully in a foreign language. And I didn't really want to hear Iraq or Afghanistan mentioned, either
As Emma points out, there is no way any separatist group can match the firepower of the Russian military, so they resorted to terrorism. Amnesty and others carry reports of appalling behaviour by sections of the Russian army, but it's also worth remembering that this is largely a conscript force being sent into an arena of street-to-street guerilla fighting. One of the most vocal groups against Putin's handling of the situation is comprised of mothers of soldiers killed in the conflict, many of whom were almost akin to 'gap-year' students.
When Putin came to power he staked his reputation on rebuilding a strong Russia. This is something which has a huge resonance in the national psyche. The concept of the "rodina", the motherland or Mother Russia is amazingly strong. It almost transcends what we in the west might understand as nationalism, and like any form of patriotism can manifest itself in positive and negative ways. Fundamentally it explains why Russia refuses to accept outside help: this is the same country which denied any problem at Chernobyl while the IAEA produced satellite imaging of radiation across Europe; which wouldn't allow NATO vessels to help salvage the Kursk submarine; and which now won't welcome international mediation over Chechnya.
To back down now would be a personal political disaster for Putin. Historically Russia has relied on a strong centralised state to hold it together: the line runs from Genghiz Khan through Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great and on the Communist era, with precious little sign of liberal democracy.
Potentially, though, it would also represent the death of Russia as a nation state. Chechnya itself is a rat-hole. It's in the middle of nowhere, and apart from the fact that the Americans really wouldn't appreciate seeing a fundamentalist Islamic state emerge in the Trans-causacaus there's not much point in keeping hold of it (soem Russians may feel that annoying the US is worth it anyway, but that's another issue). Even its possible oil wealth is wholly theoretical at the moment, and Russia has the whole of Siberia to play with for natural resources.
But, if Chechnya goes, the pressure from the likes of Tartarstan would become greater. 48% of their population is ethnically Russian, and would almost certainly choose to leave an asiatic/islamic dominated nation .... heading straight to Moscow as refugees. Repeat that across most of southern and eastern Russia and you have a huge crisis in a second-world country which would be ill-equipped to cope. Moscow's infrastructure can barely contain its current size and there simply aren't the resources to expand quickly and safely without UN help which wouldn't be acceptable (see above).
Moreover, Russia's economic prospects are tied up with the oil and gas reserves in Siberia, and the fact that in a country stretching from Poland to Japan and from the Arctic to the Tropics you can mine or grow pretty much anything you like. The more regions drop off, the less of that wealth is accessible to "greater Russia". Consequently all of that mineral reserve is left increasingly unaccessible: an independent Kamchatka (for sake of argument) would be in no position to retrieve it without help from Russia .... or the UN/US. Meanwhile, European Russia, which may have reverted back to something approaching the ancient Kyivan Rus state of the pre-Tsarist era, would be left with a large population of resident and refugee Russians and an economy built around grain and (very limited) tourism and cultural trade. And lots of nuclear missiles.
Thus we have the intractable: Chechnya on its own matters relatively little, but the knock-on effects could be vast and unpredictable. No Russian leader can afford to take that gamble, and it's easier to win votes at home by talking tough and shooting people.
/author's note - the above is probably best seen as a semi-informed opinion rather than a cast-iron collection of facts. This is the internet, ffs. Go do some proper research if you're not happy with my conclusions!/
you forgot to mention the travel vouchers. 
