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Chechen commander Basayev says resistance to Russia growing

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After months of silence Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev speaks during an interview released Thursday, July 13, 2000, filmed allegedly at an undisclosed location in the southern mountains of Chechnya, in this image from television. In the interview Basayev declared that Chechen guerillas receive support from all Muslims of the world and accused western world in turning a blind eye on Moscow's campaign in the breakaway republic. (AP Photo)

July 15, 2000 

KHASAVYURT, Russia (AP) - In an interview released Friday, top Chechen guerrilla commander Shamil Basayev said that resistance to Russian rule in Chechnya is growing.

Basayev, who lost a foot when he stepped on a mine Jan. 31, was videotaped last week by the Azerbaijan News Service. The tape was made available Friday by Associated Press Television News.

"Today we can assess the situation as positive for us, especially considering the growth in resistance to the Russian occupiers and the general uprising of national liberation," Basayev said in the interview.

Basayev, wearing a black beret and camouflage jacket, stirred sugar into a cup of tea and appeared to have recovered from his wound, suffered as he and his fighters abandoned the capital Grozny. He was seated in front of a flag with Arabic writing in a dimly-lit room.

Russian troops have taken control of most of Chechnya after rolling into the rebellious region 10 months ago. Guerrillas such as Basayev have eluded Russian forces by using forests and mountains to conceal their movements and encampments.

Basayev said he moved around to evade the Russians, but got plenty of sleep despite Russian claims that he must change his location every couple of hours.

"I spend all my time in the forests," he said. "We have bases all over the region."

He said he stayed out of towns so as not to give the Russians an excuse to shell or bomb them: "I don't give them an excuse to destroy peaceful people."

He said fighters got new recruits all the time and were inflicting casualties.

"Every day, 30 or 40 occupiers die, this is the average," he said.

That far exceeds Russian casualty reports. Both sides exaggerate the other's losses and minimize their own, and accurate figures are not publicly available.

Basayev, 35, was a leading guerrilla commander in the 1994-96 war in which Chechen independence fighters forced Russia to accept a cease-fire and withdraw its troops from the region.

He helped force Russia to the negotiating table by leading a bloody raid on the town of Budyonnovsk in a neighboring Russian region in June 1995. His fighters briefly took more than 1,000 hostages and then escaped back into Chechnya. More than 100 civilians died.

Russian troops re-entered Chechnya in September, after fighters from Basayev's group and other militants seized villages in the neighboring Russian region of Dagestan.

Basayev has lost some of his hero status from the first war, since many in Chechnya see him as having provoked the latest round of destructive fighting with the raids into Dagestan.

But Basayev said that it was Russia that had caused the current conflict by exploiting differences between Chechen factions.

Despite Russian claims to be in control of the situation in the region, he said rebels had no intention of giving up, "because we want to live independently from the Russian empire."

Three Russian soldiers died in Chechnya over the past 24 hours, military officials said Friday. Two of them were killed in the capital Grozny on Thursday when their checkpoint was fired on, and another was killed in unclear circumstances in the town of Gudermes, officials said.