Russia's armed forces chief cannot state a concrete date when leaders of Chechen rebels will be detained

Russia's armed forces chief of General Staff, Anatoly Kvashnin, refuses to state terms of the termination of the combat operation in Chechnya. Following a meeting of the Federation Council defense committee, he told journalists that he did not agree with forecasts of some military officials that leaders of Chechen rebels would be detained during the upcoming winter. "This cannot be done in a day or two, we cannot state a concrete date," he noted, RBC reports. Commenting on the recent statement of Aslan Maskhadov about his readiness to negotiate without preliminary conditions, Kvashnin stated that "at present, Maskhadov had nowhere to go, he is, as a matter of fact, a political corpse".