{"id":1544,"date":"2007-04-27T11:09:39","date_gmt":"2007-04-27T11:09:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2007\/04\/27\/chechnya-another-crisis-brewing\/"},"modified":"2008-08-18T11:28:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-18T11:28:00","slug":"chechnya-another-crisis-brewing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2007\/04\/chechnya-another-crisis-brewing\/","title":{"rendered":"Chechnya &#8211; a(nother) crisis brewing?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/world\/europe\/6599163.stm\">Helicopter crash, 17 dead &#8211; all military<\/a>. &#8220;Involved in a major military operation against separatist rebels at the time, Russian military sources are quoted as saying.&#8221; May have been &#8220;shot down&#8221; &#8211; no confirmation yet. If it was, expect a smackdown.<\/p>\n<p>In utterly unrelated news *ahem*, <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/world\/europe\/6596843.stm\">yesterday<\/a> Vladimir Putin reiterated that he will step down at the end of this term as president, meaning that there will likely be a fight in the presidential elections of early next year for the first time in ages. Not to mention the Duma elections later this year&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Not, of course, that I&#8217;m suggesting that Chechnya has been used as a convenient place to have a bit of a national security crisis in the run-up to  (at least) the last couple of Russian elections in order for the shadowy powers that be to ensure that the people they want gain power. That&#8217;d just be silly. Obviously. *<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Aleksander_Litvinenko#Allegations_against_the_Russian_Government\">ahem<\/a>*<\/p>\n<p>Still &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/world\/europe\/country_profiles\/2565049.stm\">keep your eye on Chechnya<\/a> over the next year. Something&#8217;s going to kick off. <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/world\/europe\/4620850.stm\">I can smell it<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Helicopter crash, 17 dead &#8211; all military. &#8220;Involved in a major military operation against separatist rebels at the time, Russian military sources are quoted as saying.&#8221; May have been &#8220;shot down&#8221; &#8211; no confirmation yet. If it was, expect a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2007\/04\/chechnya-another-crisis-brewing\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-former-ussr","category-the-caucasus-former-ussr-rest-of-the-world-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1544\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}