Putin cracks down as Western media frowns

President Vladimir Putin launched a crackdown in Chechnya, tightening up security at checkpoints and bulldozing buildings which had been used by terrorists. meanwhile, the BBC shows footage of interviews with Chechen refugees, evidently hand-picked, who had a grudge to grind against Russia.

President Putin has asked for the widest possible international collaboration against global terrorism, reinforcing the role played by the United nations Organisation, as “a central element in the construction of the modern world”. He added that “the organisers and perpetrators of terrorist acts will not find refuge in any country in the world”

Meanwhile, a large-scale operation was launched in Chechnya, where those suspected of collaborating with the terrorists are being rounded up and security at checkpoints is being stepped up. In the suburbs of the city, several apartment blocks were demolished due to the fact that a recent missile attack on an Mi-8 helicopter was launched from there.

However, today the BBC broadcast an interview, two days after an article appeared in the British daily newspaper The Times, showing footage of interviews with Chechen refugees who were claiming that the terrorist band which committed the atrocity in Moscow two weeks ago were heroes.

Peter Shaw, a British aid worker held by Chechen terrorists for four months and three days, has just been freed after his captors were attacked by georgian soldiers, as they were leading him away to be executed. He was kept standing the whole time in a small hole in the ground, with watter dripping on him, day and night, with no contact with the outside world except a hand that fed him food and water twice a day. He explained to Sky News that the only way he kept his sanity was by thinking of his family and discovering God.

When English people were being blown through shopping centre windows by the IRA, the Russian press was not praising terrorists, neither was Russia responsible for arming these terrorists, this came instead from NORAID, based in New York.

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY PRAVDA.Ru