World

Putin Shifts Chechen Strategy

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

January 22, 2001 / 8:45 PM EST / CBS

President Vladimir Putin on Monday handed control of Russia's 16-month war in Chechnya from the military to the country's security and anti-terrorist agency, saying it was time to change strategy.

Putin said the transfer of command to the Federal Security Service — successor to the Soviet-era KGB — will not mean less pressure on the rebels or the end of military operations.

"This doesn't mean the counter-terrorist operation will end," Putin, a former FSB head, said on ORT television news. "It will continue no less intensively, but with an accent on different forces and means."

The new emphasis will be on commando operations to hunt down small rebel bands and their leaders, while local police seek to maintain order, Kremlin officials said.

Russian troops have struggled to re-establish Moscow's control over the rebel region. Independence fighters kicked out Russian forces in a 1994-96 war, but federal troops went back in September, 1999.

Relying on a lopsided advantage in firepower, they occupied most of Chechnya and put an end to large-scale rebel operations.

Putin, whose meteoric rise to the presidency from relative obscurity was fueled by strong public backing for his tough line on Chechnya, has sought to isolate the rebel leadership and replace it with a pro-Moscow civilian administration.

Last June he picked Chechen religious leader Akhmad Kadyrov to lead the pro-Russian local government, hoping he could build support among Chechens tired of the death and destruction associated with Chechnya's independence bid.

But small groups of determined guerrilla fighters inflict almost daily casualties with ambushes and mines — including an attack Sunday in which 14 soldiers reportedly died.

Putin's decree gave FSB head Nikolai Patrushev full authority over the war effort. Patrushev's appointment follows a trend of promotions for current and former FSB personnel under Putin, a former KGB agent.

Putin also announced that forces in the region will be reduced as earlier promised, but did not say when or by how much. Russian officials have sought to portray the fighting as nearing an end and said they are ready to concentrate on rebuilding civilian institutions.

The FSB has wide-ranging security functions, including fighting foreign spies, organized crime and terrorism.

Russia's force in Chechnya is now a mix of regular army troops, paramilitary police, border guards, FSB officers and others. At the peak of heavy fighting last year, it numbered 100,000; the current force is about 80,000, said Yuri Baluyevsky, deputy head of the general staff.

Military analysts said Putin was making a virtue of necessity, pulling out bored troops no longer in the frontline of the guerrilla war but whose worsening discipline only made Russia more vulnerable to Western criticism over human rights.

"Putin wants to show everybody that the war has ended," said Alexei Malashenko of Moscow's Carnegie Cener.

"Perhaps he wants to prove to himself that the war is ended," Malashenko said.

On Thursday, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France, is to take up accusations of human rights violations by Russian forces during the campaign. The Russian delegation's voting rights in the assembly were suspended last spring over Chechnya.

Critics say the FSB has been involved in rights abuses in Chechnya. Radio Liberty correspondent Andrei Babitsky said the service had a hand in his detention last winter, which following critical reporting on the war.

Russian authorities handed him over to an unknown Chechen group, and he was released only several weeks later. The FSB denied involvement.