Sergey Snegov: Freedom in Maskhadov’s way

It would be recalled that Maskhasdov expressed his point of view on the Chechen war in French news-paper “Le Monde”. He calls for European community to stop the “Russian barbarians with “nuclear cudgel” and let the Chechens, “struggling for freedom”, fight. The Maskhadov’s conception about slave-trade is very interesting, too. The awful pictures of the violence which the slave-traders did to hostages demonstrated on TV influenced the opinion of the West on the Chechen campaign most of all. But according to Maskhadov, the Chechens are not to blame, they don’t take prisoners. According to the Chechen leader, Russians shoot, sell, buy. And blame the Chechens. The day before yesterday it was reported that a captive had been released. The man has been a slave in Chechnya for 10 (!) years. Another captive, released recently, spent in Chechnya 7 years as a sleeve. These people were sold, bought and enslaved in 1990-1993. Nobody knew about Maskhadov and his struggle then, and the Soviet Union was governed by Mikhail Gorbachev. How to explain these facts in that case? What struggle for freedom is Maskhadov speaking about? Nobody but the “president” has seen non-existent “Ichkeria”. However everybody has seen the released slaves.