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| Caucasus | |
| Elite units at ready to defend Putin's reputation | |
| 2004-09-03 | |
EFL
Smart cookie. But depriving the hostages of food (& possibly water) makes playing Putin's long game more difficult. Almost certainly, if he follows that path, he will rely on Spetsnaz, the Russian special forces formed during the cold war. Members of Alpha, its most elite unit, are trained in counter-terrorism techniques and are among the world's most experienced when it comes to storming buildings. Alpha was the first Spetsnaz unit formed in the 1970s on the orders of the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev after Palestinian terrorists killed several Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. Shrouded in mystery during the Soviet era, Spetsnaz emerged from the shadows with the end of the cold war. Like other Russian military units, the 1990s were a time of poor morale and general malaise. Bad pay and a lack of discipline meant that many of their number were recruited by shady security gangs to carry out dirty work. Their operational ability was sapped by bad leadership. In 1995, after more than 100 Chechen rebels, led by the warlord Shamil Basayev, took 2,000 hostages in a hospital in the southern Russian town of Budennovsk, Alpha and other units were ordered to attack. But the operation turned into a humiliating debacle. Despite air support and back-up from another Spetsnaz unit, Alpha failed to take the building and suffered many casualties. Basayev was later able to negotiate a deal that allowed him and his fighters to leave unmolested, and Moscow was forced to promise to enter negotiations on ending the war. | |
| Posted by:Bulldog |