AndyRussian invasion of Ukraine
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Update: This post refers to Shamil Basayev’s interview with Channel 4 news in February 2005. If you are coming to this post looking for news of Shamil Basayev’s ABC interview, check out my brief report here.
Kavkaz Center has a full, if badly translated, transcript of Shamil Basayev’s interview on British tv, which I wrote about yesterday. Nothing particularly interesting to report over the excerpts which came out yesterday, and nothing particularly new in what he is saying compared to his speeches of the past few years. Rhetoric, threats, weak justifucations, and accusations of Russian barbarity.
Channel 4 has also published a statement regarding its decision to broadcast the interview, alongside a statement from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs accusing them of behaving irresponsibly. If you have either a Channel 4 subscription or a RealOne Super Pass, you can also view their original broadcast from that page.
I’m personally very comfortable with their decision to broadcast the interview. They did a good job of putting the issue into context, and although there is bound to be some element of sensationalism in showing something like this, the biggest outcome was to show Basayev as a deranged, if very dangerous, man. His words probably had the opposite effect to what he intended, especially as they overshadowed by his monumentally stupid decision to wear a shirt with the slogan "anti-terror" emblazoned across it.
Basayev’s every major ‘movement’ is made thoughtfully, carefully and precisely. The deaths of those innocents in the Beslan siege is on the hands of your Russian leader Putin. Do you realise the intensity of what you’re saying? You’re yet another blogger denouncing every ‘killing’ by muslim(s) in the world as “terrorism”.
I agree with you that ‘Basayev’s every major movement is made thoughtfully, carefully and precisely.’ That doesn’t mean that the man behind those careful, precise thoughts is not deranged.
Secondly, deranged or not, Basayev has free will and control of his own actions. He did not have to choose to take his fight into a school, a school full of innocent children. Yet he did.
Sure, you could argue that Putin and the Russian people are targetting the innocent in Chechnya. But that doesn’t mean that reacting in the same manner is right. Killing children is wrong if Russians do it. Killing children is wrong if Chechens do it. Killing children is just wrong.