There have been rumours about "Chechens" fighting on the Russian side in Georgia. Today the Georgian government claimed that "ethnic Georgianvillages in South Ossetia are systematically destroyed by Chechenmilitias", according to BBC World.
Now the journalists of Chechenewshave found a blog in which a Russian journalist who is embedded with theinvasion force gives a detailed description of the military events untilSunday morning, 10 August. (The original - in Russian only - is found athttp://mk.ru/blogs/MK/2008/08/10/society/365780/).The author describes the events of Saturday when an advanced force ofthe 58th Russian Army (the butchers of Chechnya) tried to enterapparently empty Tskhinvali and ended up in an ambush, in which the commander of the Army, Lieutenant General Khrulyov, was wounded and the group was almost wiped out.
The advance force consisted of the 694th Regiment, followed by the "Chechen" GRU battalion "Vostok" (theYamadayev gang for others), with the Krasnodar GRU Spetsnaz taking therear. The description sounds absolutely credible, especially because itlists severe Russian losses. The battalion entered with "30 Infantry Fighting Vehicles, 3 APCs, 2 tanks and Khrulyov himself", and only "5IFVs and 1 APC returned. The battalion existed no longer".IMO this report is so specific that the story about the presence of the"Vostok" battalion is probably true.
The Georgian reports might becorrect and it might be the remaining thugs from the Yamadayev gang whoare terrorizing the ethnic Georgian population - it would sound logicalwith their criminal record. And the Russian hate mongers will of coursebe happy if this activity can help alienating the Georgians from theirnatural allies in the Chechen Resistance.
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