RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Russian tinderbox known as Chechnya is smoldering once again, indicating a complete policy breakdown on the part of the Kremlin that has wide and deep repercussions for the outside world — including a greatly increased risk of terrorism at the 2014 Olympic Games. If the Obama administration does not act soon, it may have blood on its hands.

Current events coming out of the region look like a public relations nightmare for the Kremlin. First came the renewed insurrection: on October 19, 2010, Chechen rebels launched a bold direct assault ^[1] on the Chechen parliament building in the capital city of Grozny, choosing the exact moment when a high-ranking Russian cabinet official was visiting. A few months earlier, the rebels had been even more provocative, attempting to assassinate ^[2] the Kremlin’s puppet ruler Ramzan Kadyrov while he was watching a theater program. The myth that Kadyrov had decisively cowed the rebels has been, no pun intended, exploded. In fact the rebel groups are operating far and wide with impunity. There was a recent attack on a power station ^[3] in Kabardino-Balkaria and a devastating explosion ^[4] at an outdoor market in Vladikavkaz, emphasizing that insurrectionist activity is not limited to Chechnya proper but is spreading throughout the region.

Then came the revelations: in recent weeks, two different Russian military figures have come forward with confessions about brutality in the Kremlin’s earlier military campaigns in Chechnya that can only be called barbarism.

Major Alexei Potyomkin ^[5] has admitted ^[6] that a group of Red Cross volunteers slaughtered south of Grozny in 2006 were butchered not by rebels, but by Russian forces — hearkening back to World War II when Russian forces exterminated thousands of Polish officers in the forest of Katyn and blamed it on the Nazis.

Even more chilling, the Times of London has published the diary ^[7] of an anonymous Russian combatant who reveals a seemingly endless litany of horrific crimes committed during the 1999 crackdown.

Viewed through this prism, an explosion days ago at the rail station ^[8] in the spa town of Matsesta, just a few miles outside of Sochi where the 2014 Winter Olympics are to be held, takes on a terrifying new level of significance. It is as if the rebels are both probing and taunting the Russian government, preparing the stage for a wave of attacks as the Olympiad unfolds. Indeed, rail attacks are becoming bolder and more commonplace ^[9] all across Russia, even in areas remote from the region itself. Attacks on law enforcement officers and troops viewed as occupiers continue on a regular basis ^[10] as well, with no end in sight.

That the Russian government is unable to maintain security in the Caucasus, and that it is unwilling to be honest about that fact with the world — to the contrary, they seem eager to gamble with the lives of the world’s young athletes for propaganda purposes — can surprise nobody who is familiar with the KGB regime in the Kremlin. But the attitude of the Obama government towards these ominous developments is truly shocking and repellent, especially since Russia was not awarded the Olympic Games on Obama’s watch.

There are many other alarm bells ringing where Russia is concerned, and Obama is ignoring them all, regardless of the source.

In the Washington Times, Jeffrey Kuhner of the Edmund Burke Institute warns that Russia is a “rogue state ^[11]” bent on imperialism in the Ukraine. In an editorial on the rigged judicial persecution of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the New York Times calls the Russian justice system “outrageous ^[12]” and concludes: “Russia has yet to grasp the idea of equal justice under law.” In the Christian Science Monitor, Russia’s attitude towards basic democratic ideals has been exposed as an utter sham ^[13].

Obama shouldn’t need any help; he should be able to see for himself. The Kremlin has done nothing to squelch rumors that it sent a hit squad ^[14] to eliminate a turncoat agent in the United States, and it is aggressively defending ^[15] Viktor Bout, the “merchant of death,” from American justice even as it just as aggressively shields Andrei Lugovoi — assassin of Alexander Litvinenko — from British justice. Meanwhile, it is aping the USSR at every turn, including a new rule that will bar entry to Russia ^[16] anyone who doesn’t agree with the state-sponsored version of Russian history.

Yet Obama continues brown-nosing the Kremlin, hoping against hope that he can claim “success” with Russian relations that will help cover up so much failure everywhere else. He is offering Russia WTO admission for which it is not qualified, a voice in NATO counsels that it does not deserve, a one-sided nuclear treaty which benefits only Russia, and all the hamburger-munching propaganda photo ops he can swallow. Meanwhile, Obama says nothing critical about either the Kremlin’s aggressive foreign policy or its draconian domestic crackdown.

We know this policy: we’ve seen it before and seen its results. It’s called appeasement, and it only encourages more aggression and brutality.