Shortly after Russian troops effected their "rescue," blowing a hole in the wall of the Moscow theater in which some 50 Chechen guerrillas had held 750 city residents, Putin declared the raid to be an "almost impossible" victory, while regretting that "we failed to save everyone." As the news came out that 118 hostages had been killed by the effects of anesthetic gas pumped into the building under the orders of Russian officers, he moderated his tone only slightly, describing the events as "tragic."

"Russia will never make any deal with terrorists nor will it give in to any blackmail," Putin said on October 28 as he announced a military campaign to wage war on "terrorists...whatever their whereabouts."

Washington, which is pressing for the acquiescence of the government of the workers state in its preparations for war on Iraq and deepening intervention in the Middle East, at first declared support for the Russian action. "The president feels very strongly that the people to blame here are the terrorists... who took hostages and endangered the lives of others," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer October 28.

As the facts of the raid were revealed over the following hours, officials changed their tune. According to the New York Times, the U.S. ambassador said the next day that "secrecy about the use of a powerful anesthetic gas may have needlessly raised the toll in Saturday’s raid."

The Chechen guerrillas had taken over the theater October 23, threatening to kill the hostages and demanding that Moscow withdraw its forces from Chechnya. As the guerrillas’ deadline expired three days later, Russian special forces soldiers pumped the gas into the building. Many of those who escaped death suffered liver, heart, and kidney damage. As the fumes dissipated the soldiers entered the building. They shot most of the 50 rebels in the head.

Many afflicted hostages were rushed to hospitals, only to die when medical staff, kept in the dark about the nature of the gas, were unable to provide treatment for the poisoning. "Almost everyone would have survived," said a Russian doctor on October 30, if people had been "helped to breathe with artificial ventilation while still in the vehicles being brought to the hospitals."

Another doctor reported that physicians were instructed to describe their patients as "victims of terrorism and violence" rather than gas poisoning.

"They poisoned us like cockroaches," one woman told the daily newspaper Kommersant. A journalist who had helped in negotiations with the hostage-takers told reporters that the "operation was staged to destroy the [Chechen rebels] as a show of strength...but not to free the hostages."

"Russia will respond with measures that are adequate to the threat to the Russian federation," said Putin, "striking all the places where the terrorists themselves, the organizers of these crimes and their ideological and financial inspirers are." He pledged to grant the military wider powers and directed the army brass to draft new guidelines for conducting Moscow’s antiterror operations.

Russia’s lower house of parliament, the Duma, is considering a sweeping bill that, among other measures, would restrict news coverage of "antiterror operations" and bar the media from carrying statements by rebel spokespeople.

On October 31 Russian interior minister Boris Gryzlov announced that several dozen people had been arrested in connection with the hostage crisis as part of a security clampdown. Chechens living in Moscow were a particular target of these operations.  
 
‘War is over, but there is no peace’
Moscow has launched two wars over the past decade to crush the independence movement of the largely Muslim people of Chechnya in the northern Caucasus mountains. In 1994–96 the Chechen fighters defeated an invasion army of 30,000 Russian troops. In 1999 Putin launched another war that demolished most of the territory and placed occupying troops in the capital of Grozny, which was in virtual ruins, and other key points.

Today, 85,000 Russian soldiers remain in the region, where up to 80,000 Chechens have died and 35,000 have disappeared over the past three years. Tens of thousands of Chechen refugees have moved into the neighboring republics of Georgia and Ingushetia.

Engaging chiefly in hit-and-run guerrilla actions, the Chechen forces are still capable of inflicting damage. The Russian government admits that at least 4,000 soldiers have been killed in the last three years.

Following the hostage crisis, Russian military forces killed 30 Chechen independence fighters on October 28 near Tsentoroy, a village east of Grozny. The next day a military helicopter was shot down as it prepared to land at the main military base in Chechnya--the fourth Russian helicopter downed in Chechnya in less than three months.

"The war is over, but there is no peace," remarked Akhmad Kadyrov, the Moscow-appointed administrative head in Chechnya.

The stance of the U.S. government toward these developments has shifted several times as it vacillates between emphasizing its historical hostility to the workers state and seeking to draw Moscow into short-term alliances. While Washington supported the 1994 Russian offensive, it opposed the operations launched in 1999. President William Clinton’s secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, described Moscow’s offensive at the time as "self-isolating."

More recently, the Bush government has taken advantage of Putin’s eagerness to contribute to the imperialist assault on Afghanistan and cooperate with the placing of U.S. military forces in surrounding countries that are part of the former Soviet Union.

The governments of the imperialist superpower and the workers state face many conflicts of interest. One example is the strategically placed republic of Georgia, right on Russia’s doorstep and a neighbor of Chechyna. Washington views the territory as the linchpin for transportation of oil and gas from the rich fields in the Caspian Sea, and has already deployed 200 Green Berets in the territory--along with communications equipment, light weaponry, and vehicles, in a $64 million package signed with the Georgian government. The special forces will train some 1,200 Georgian soldiers in operations in the Pankisi Gorge, which borders Russia.

Moscow, which still has military bases in Georgia, charges that Pankisi is a base for "international terrorism" and a supply channel for Chechen insurgents. Russian ground troops and warplanes have conducted repeated military search and destroy operations in Georgian territory, including five bombing raids in August. Putin has announced that the Russian military is considering strikes along Georgia’s border with Chechnya.

The Russian government is also nervous about the impending U.S.-led imperialist war against Iraq, in which it stands to lose about $7 billion owed by Baghdad, as well as access to Iraqi oil wealth, if the regime of Saddam Hussein is toppled.  
 
Conflicts with European Union
Moscow has also come under pressure from the European Union (EU). As a condition for agreeing to Russia’s membership in the World Trade Organization, EU officials have been pressing the Russian workers state to open up its vast energy reserves to capitalist competition. Natural gas and crude oil, the country’s top export items, are state-owned.

EU representatives have demanded a reduction in Russia’s domestic fuel subsidies. "The low price of gas in Russia contributes $5 billion a year in subsidies to industry a year," complained Herve Jouanjean, the European Commission’s director of WTO affairs. Gazprom, the state energy company, sells gas on the domestic market for about $15 per 1,000 cubic meters, while the export price is about $95 for the same quantity.

"We accept that gas prices in Russia cannot reach international prices overnight, but we cannot accept that a market economy can be on the basis of subsidies to its industrial sector," said Jouanjean.  
 
 
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