Russian defence minister hails Basayev's death
Russia’s defence minister today hailed the killing of Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev as a just retribution to “our bin Laden", but said that his death did not mean an end to the fight against rebels.
Sergei Ivanov, speaking on a trip to the Chechen capital, Grozny, said Basayev was the last of a string of Chechen rebel leaders who had initiated a separatist drive nearly 15 years ago.
“Basayev’s death is a landmark event,” Ivanov said in remarks broadcast by Russian state television. “He was our bin Laden.”
Basayev, the ruthless warlord who orchestrated Russia’s worst terrorist attacks, including the bloody 2004 Beslan school siege, was killed yesterday when a dynamite-laden truck in his convoy exploded in Ingushetia, a Russian province west of Chechnya.
Russia’s security chief told President Vladimir Putin that Basayev had been killed in a special operation, while a rebel-connected website said Basayev had died in an accidental explosion.
The ITAR-Tass news agency, citing an unidentified law enforcement official in southern Russia, reported that Basayev had actually been killed by a missile that homed in on his phone – the method used to kill Chechen separatist President Dzhokhar Dudayev in 1996.
Ivanov said that Basayev’s death would help stabilise Chechnya, but added that authorities must continue their hunt for the rebels.
“The killing of that terrorist doesn’t mean that the fight against militants is over,” he said. “There is still work to do, and it’s being done.”
Ivanov also said that the federal government would strengthen efforts to normalise conditions in the region and shortly allocate funds for rebuilding the war-shattered city of Grozny.
Oleg Orlov, the head of Memorial, a leading Russian rights group that has been active in Chechnya, said that Basayev’s death would weaken rebels but wouldn’t end hostilities. “The situation will not change drastically,” Orlov said, according to the Interfax news agency.
The inability to hunt down Basayev was a long-standing embarrassment for Russia, and analysts said that his killing was a huge propaganda coup for Putin as he prepares to host leaders of the Group of Eight leading industrialised nations at a weekend summit in St. Petersburg.
