CHECHNYA: TIME FOR THE WEST TO PRESSURE PUTIN

摘要

A hard line. That's what Russian President Vladimir V. Putin took to resolve the Moscow hostage-taking crisis that gripped his country last week―and that's what he is sticking to in his approach to the underlying cause of the ordeal in the first place, the bloody, stalemated war in the breakaway Russian republic of Chechnya. It's a formula with little prospect for success―and it's in the interest of Western leaders to help him to see that. Putin's decision to send in Russian special forces to free some 800 captives in a Moscow theater from Chechen terrorists armed with explosives was a difficult but defensible call. At least 117 people have died from the fen-tanyl-based gas used to immobilize the hostage-takers―but who's to say the terrorists would not have killed everyone in the building? "We showed that Russia cannot be brought to her knees," Putin said on Oct. 26.