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Putin In Chechnya As Official Killed
MOSCOW, April 14 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The deputy prosecutor for the Chechen capital Grozny was assassinated Saturday by Chechen separatists in the second killing of a top pro-Moscow official in the breakaway republic in 48 hours, the local military command was quoted by Interfax as saying.
The gunning down of Vladimir Moroz came as Russian President Vladimir Putin traveled to Chechnya for the first time since his election in March last year.
It was the first time a government law officer of Russian origin had been killed in the southern republic since the start of the latest Russian military intervention in October 1999.
Moroz and his assistant, who was seriously wounded, were returning from a city area where three women had been killed earlier in the day, when separatists opened fire with automatic weapons.
Interfax quoted witnesses saying that Moroz died immediately in a hail of bullets, and the other man was rushed to hospital.
Late on Thursday, a Chechen who was deputy head of the pro-Russian civilian administration, Adam Deniyev, died from head wounds in a bomb attack while taping a television show in his home village of Avtury. He was the opposition's most senior victim since the start of the latest separatist war.
A separatist Chechen spokesman for President Aslan Maskhadov said Deniyev was killed for cooperating with Russia.
''This operation was carried out by fighters of the eastern front,'' Vakha Dzhamalkhanov, who described himself as Maskhadov's chief of staff, said in a statement. ''We think and hope that all remaining Chechens who cooperate with Russia will understand that the same fate awaits them.''
Chechen staff of the pro-Russian administration in the republic are regular targets by separatists who regard them as traitors. Scores have been killed in the ongoing conflict.
A somber Putin laid flowers on Saturday near where 84 Russian paratroopers were ambushed by separatists hiding in the republic's southern mountains last April, the deadliest such attack in the bloody conflict.
He flew over the fateful gorge in a Russian military helicopter before returning to the main Russian military base in Khankala.
As Russian contract soldiers have complained about not receiving pay, Russian state television stated Putin was primarily there to discuss the financing of federal forces in the region.
"In fact, one of the problems which we plan to deal with today is precisely financing, material support, and the exact payment of combat pay, " he said to state television as quoted by the BBC.
Putin promised that even though federal troops were starting a partial withdrawal from the separatist province, Russia would never repeat the humiliating retreat that ended the earlier 1994-96 war.
Although the Russian government says the war is winding down, and even though Chechen separatists no longer launch large-scale military operations, Russian troops suffer daily casualties from ambushes and landmines.
It was Putin's first visit to the separatist republic since he co-piloted a Russian fighter jet into Chechnya's second city, Gudermes, in a pre-election stunt five days before he won the March 2000 presidential poll.
Public support for the war helped Putin storm to victory over weak Communist and liberal-democrat opposition.
Putin recently announced a partial troop withdrawal from the republic, but a recent series of deadly bombing attacks blamed on Chechen separatists suggest that the opposition are stepping up their resistance with the onset of spring - which gives fighters natural cover in the leafy terrain.
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