70,000 soldiers has nothing to oppose to 1,500 rebels

Developments of recent weeks show that Chechen rebels have become much more active. "The June developments in Ingushetia, attacks in Grozny in August, passenger plane explosions, terror attacks in Moscow and Beslan, not to mention incessant sallies of small rebel groups in different districts evidence that the rebels' final defeat is still a long way off. Besides, it should be admitted that separatists are still supported by a part of the population," a source in the Chechen Interior Ministry said to the Caucasian Knot correspondent. "Our main trouble today is disconnection. Each structure and each department act according to their own schemes and plans, pursuing only their own, very special tasks. Rebels always succeed in leaving us behind in their actions because of the lack of coordination between our actions. Being very late in fact, we try to do something after it already happened, instead of working to forestall rebel terror attacks and sallies."

The presence of a large number of troops on the territory of the Chechen Republic hardly influences the separatists' tactics and actions. There are from 40 to 70 thousand servicemen and officers of different Russian security agencies in Chechnya today, official sources say. According to other sources, this figure is larger by a factor of two or three. One should not ignore the Chechen Interior Ministry numbering 13 thousand people. Besides, there is the Chechen president's security service, numbering from 1.5 to several thousand people by different estimates.

"It's impossible to find any reasonable explanation for what happens in Chechnya. The huge army of Russian soldiers and local law enforcers has been unable to find and destroy several rebel groups for five years. And the number of separatists hasn't changed since 2000: there're 1.5 thousand of them, according to official reports. Some dirty game aimed at dragging the war out for many long years is played in Chechnya," Vakhid Salamov, a former officer of the Interior Ministry of the USSR, said.