LJ blogs discuss video on hostage-taking by federal troops in Chechnya

The LiveJournal (LJ) blogs in Internet continue discussing a fragment of the documentary "Chechen Trap" showing operations in Chechnya during the first war campaign, which was placed by one of the bloggers - dmitryhorse.livejournal.com.

The film fragment shows the war episode, when in May 1995 in Shatoi village the superior forces of militants surrounded about 200 "federals". Then, the commandoes who came from Ulyanovsk took the whole village population as hostages and declared to the militants: "If you open fire, we'll cut out all women and children."

Alexander Pavlov, the commander of the unit, is smiling into the journalists' video camera that the ultimatum helped the commandoes to hold on in the village until reinforcement arrived: the militants who were more numerous that the commandoes and who wanted to disarm the unit, did not dare to open fire and risk the lives of the villagers.

The author of the message put a question to the participants of the discussion: why the actions of the unit commander, in fact similar to the demands of terrorists in Beslan and Dubrovka Theatrical Centre, are treated as a heroic act in the film? Isn't it an example of the practice of "double standards" in relation to friends or foes in war actions? "In fact, the essence of what happened was the same: taking peaceful residents as hostages," blogger dmitryhorse remarks.

It has now become known to the broad audience of LiveJournal that the practice of hostage-taking was used not only by militants, but also - repeatedly - by federal armed forces. It follows from the report of the Human Rights Centre "Memorial" named "Behind Their Backs..." that the practice of "live shield" was used in March 1996 in the village of Samashki.