“pullout will have no impact on the security situation in Chechnya," said Ivanov

MOSCOW, March 4 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Russia will withdraw more 1,270 servicemen and some 200 of military hardware from Chechnya within the next few days, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said Tuesday, March 4.

Emerging from a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ivanov said the “pullout will have no impact on the security situation in Chechnya," Agence France-Presse reported.

Ivanov further said that the departing troops would be mainly engineers and sappers, artillery personnel and interior ministry forces.

“Between 30,000 and 35,000 interior troops will remain on a temporary basis," he said, adding that some material would be transferred, where appropriate, from military to civilian use.

A withdrawal of more than 1,000 men from the war-torn republic was announced by the defence ministry on Monday, March 3, just ahead of a constitutional referendum aimed at showing a return to normality in the country.

“The evacuation will have no consequences for security in Chechnya,” said the head of the Russian armed forces, General Anatoly Kvashnin, adding the troops to be pulled out were "unnecessary, having carried out their task in Chechnya."

The military chief said the situation in Chechnya was improving all the time and stressed that "defence ministry forces are not at present active in the non-mountainous regions (of Chechnya) and have transferred all their functions to the interior ministry."

The expected referendum aims to fix Chechnya's place in the Russian Federation and provide the basis for what the Kremlin is presenting as a political settlement to the long-running conflict.

Despite their massive military presence, Russian forces have failed to quell operations by Chechen independence-seeking fighters and sustain losses on a daily basis.

The Russian troops and Chechen fighters fought between December 1994 and July 1996 and the current fighting has been in progress since Russia sent its troops back to the republic in October 1999.

Putin has been attempting to press on the world that the war in Chechnya is coming to a peaceful end by planning the constitutional referendum later in the month that is set to be followed by presidential and local elections.

But human rights watchdogs accuse the Russian forces of everything from kidnapping to summary executions and rape against the civilian population.

"I don't need to watch the news to know what's going on in Chechnya," said Aset Vatsuyeva, a Chechen journalist, who works now as a newscaster on Russian television.

“The position of the Russian authorities is a vicious circle. All wars end through negotiations. I didn't recognize my hometown.

“The ruins, the depressed people… I've never seen anything worse, not in my worst nightmares, not even in films," she lamented.