Ilya Yashin
Odd how the truth comes out. Thanks to triangulation, the regime opposition power struggle, and possibly one between 'towers of the Kremlin', the other side of the story regarding Zbigniew Brzezinski's and other Washingtonians' Chechen 'freedom fighters' accidentally emerges from the liberal opposition in Moscow.

Translated excerpt (original Russian text is at the bottom of this page) from Ilya Yashin's much-touted report on the threat to Russia's national security posed by Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov:
This period (the 1990s - Gordon Hahn) in the country is associated with a sharp increase in crime. In addition, the new Chechen authorities began to pursue a policy of displacement of people from other ethnic groups, which is accompanied by killings, looting, and ethnic cleansing. Journalist Paul Klebnikov called these events a genocide of ethnic Russians, which was carried out in Chechnya before the combat operations that began in 1994. 'It was a bloody war against the civilian ethnic Russian population of Chechnya - so-called forced chechenization,' he wrote. Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2000 described the events as 'a large-scale genocide against the Russian population.' These events were due to both a weakening of the central government and an appeal by the population to restore justice after Stalin's deportation of the Chechen people. The republic's new authorities very successfully speculated on these sentiments.'

In July 1999, the Ministry of Nationalities of the Russian Federation reported that from 1991 to 1999 more than 21 thousand ethnic Russians were killed (not counting those killed in war) and more than 100 thousand apartments and houses belonging to members of non-Chechen ethnic groups were seized in Chechnya. More than 46 thousand were turned into de facto slaves, with their property and passports confiscated with the connivance of the republican and federal authorities (putin-itogi.ru, p. 5).
Typically, when one writes things like this, it brings charges of being a 'Putin apologist' and/or Islamophobe. The truth about the Chechens' 'pursuit of freedom and democracy' championed by the Washington consensus in those days comes out in a new effort favored by that same consensus to overthrow the ruling regime in Russia, regardless of the risks and consequences in a country laden with chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear materials and/or weapons. Hence, the next sentence in Yashin's report after those above reads: "It was at this time that none other than Ramzan Kadyrov proved himself." In other words, the only way that the 1990s Chechens' radical nationalism and repression of the republic's ethnic Russians - all of which began BEFORE THE FIRST WAR—comes out is in a report designed to undermine the rather nasty albeit Kadyrov and the rather undemocratic albeit Putin regime.

The report has not been translated into English and one can be sure that U.S. government media, like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFSRL), that have given great attention to Yashin's report and translated portions of it will not translate these passages. Lest one not understand why, keep in mind that RFERL until as late as 2011 was in the business of praising Chechen terrorists who had now radicalized to global jihadists, spread their movement across Russia's North Caucasus, and were dispatching suicide bombers to kill civilians across Russia. See 'REPORT: Caucasus Jihadism Through Western Eyes: The Failure of American Rusology to Understand the North Caucasus Mujahedin', Gordonhahn.com Russian and Eurasian Politics, 18 February 2015.

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EXCERPT FROM YASHIN'S REPORT IN RUSSIAN:
Этот период в республике связан с резким ростом криминала. Кроме того, новые чеченские власти стали проводить политику вытеснения жителей других национальностей, которая сопровождалась убийствами, грабежами и этниче- скими чистками. Журналист Пол Хлебников на- звал эти события геноцидом русских, который осуществлялся в Чечне еще до боевых действий, начавшихся в 1994 году. «Это была кровавая война против мирного русского населения Чечни, так называемая принудительная чеченизация», — писал он. Президент РФ Владимир Путин в 2000 году охарактеризовал эти события как «широкомасштабный геноцид в отношении русского населения». Эти события были обусловлены как ослаблением центральной власти, так и запросом у населения на восстановление справедливости после сталинской депортации чеченского народа. Новые власти республики весьма успешно спекулировали на этих настроениях».

В июле 1999 года Министерство по делам на- циональностей РФ сообщило, что в Чечне с 1991 по 1999 год было убито более 21 тыс. русских (не считая погибших в ходе военных действий), захвачено более 100 тыс. квартир и домов, принадлежащих представителям нечеченских этносов. Более 46 тыс. человек оказались фактически превращены в рабов, у них отбиралось имущество и паспорта при попустительстве республиканских и федеральных властей. Проявил себя в это время и никому не из- вестный тогда Рамзан Кадыров.
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About the Author

Gordon M. Hahn is an Analyst and Advisory Board Member of the Geostrategic Forecasting Corporation. He is also Analyst/Consultant, Russia Other Points of View and Senior Researcher, Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), Akribis Group, San Jose, California. Dr Hahn is author of three well-received books, Russia's Revolution From Above (Transaction, 2002), Russia's Islamic Threat (Yale University Press, 2007), which was named an outstanding title of 2007 by Choice magazine, and The 'Caucasus Emirate' Mujahedin: Global Jihadism in Russia's North Caucasus and Beyond (McFarland Publishers, 2014). He also has authored hundreds of articles in scholarly journals and other publications on Russian, Eurasian and international politics and publishes the Islam, Islamism, and Politics in Eurasia Report (IIPER) at CSIS at http://csis.org/program/russia-and-eurasia-program. Dr. Hahn has been a visiting scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. (2011-2013), the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. (1995 and 2005), and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He has taught at Boston, American, Stanford, San Jose State, San Francisco State, and St. Petersburg State (Russia) Universities.