Chechnya chips away at Putin image
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When Russian President Vladimir Putin came to power, he was hailed as a tough and terse strongman who would crush Chechen separatists and make the fragile federation safe for ordinary citizens.
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GROZNY, Russia -- Twelve years after Chechnya sank into a maelstrom of violence, Russia has all but won its war against separatist rebels in the breakaway Muslim republic. Russian President Vladimir Putin's strategy of slowly withdrawing federal forces and relying on a pro-Moscow Chechen strongman to squelch the conflict seems to have worked.
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Chechnya is often called a breakaway republic, but the militant separatists who have harried Russian forces for more than a decade and struck with bold attacks within and beyond the mostly Muslim region's borders are a relatively small segment of a population long tired of bloodshed.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin made an unannounced Sunday visit to Chechnya to place flowers onto the grave of former Chechen leader Akhmad Kadyrov.
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Russian papers wonder what President Putin's nomination of Viktor Zubkov as PM means for the presidential election.
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Russia is joining the ranks of nascent dictatorships, and Vladimir Putin is the executioner of Russian democracy. Right? Wrong. Russia is not a dictatorship, and the political system Putin is trying to reshape is not a democracy.
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Moscow has few options left for a negotiated end to the violence in Chechnya, a top adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin said on the eve of the 10-year anniversary of Russia's advance into the breakaway republic.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin has ruled out negotiations with Chechen rebels after the Beslan school bloodbath, further straining ties with Western leaders who are pressing for a political solution to Chechnya.
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Intrigue was entirely absent from Sundayâs presidential elections in Chechnya. The name of the next Kremlin-bankrolled leader of Chechnya was known days after the
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Vladimir Putin makes an unannounced visit to the grave of Chechnya's assassinated leader.
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A glance at Chechnya and its conflict:
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Russian President Vladimir Putin is accusing the West of indulging terrorists. Putin says he faces double standards in the attitude towards terrorism.
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A Russian colonel convicted of murdering  a Chechen woman has withdrawn his request for a pardon, sparing  President Vladimir Putin the uncomfortable choice of offending  either the volatile region or his military.
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President Vladimir Putin was thoroughly justified in his outrage at the Beslan atrocities, but there was an ominous tone to his suggestion that part of the problem was that Western powers were mucking around in the Caucasus, or that Russia was vulnerable
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Russian President Vladimir Putin has made an unannounced trip to Chechnya to honor the memory of the assassinated leader of the restive southern republic, one week before a scheduled vote to replace him.
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The president who said he looked into Vladimir Putin's soul three years ago and liked what he saw may take a dimmer view of the Russian president now. How to deal with the increasingly authoritarian leader is giving the Bush administration a second-term headache.
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THE Russian president, Vladimir Putin, made an unannounced visit to Chechnya yesterday to lay flowers at the grave of the regionâs assassinated president a week before the election to replace him.