So, you say MALE "Baltic snipers" run around in "white tights"?
- on 14 January a report noted a female unit from the Baltics, the so-called white tights, is in Chechnya. They get $1000 per day plus $1500 for each Russian officer they kill. (ITAR-TASS, 14 January 1995, as reported in FBIS-SOV-95-010, 17 January 1995, p 28.)
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/1995/chechpt3.htm
Several Russian sources have fanciful reports about thousands of muhajeddins from Afghanistan and female snipers in white tights from the Baltic countries. In fact there were relatively few mujaheddins in Chechnya and no western journalist ever saw any of the amazons from the Baltic states.
http://www.caucasus.dk/publication1.htm
To explain the debacle, Russian propaganda has paraded a far-fetched collection of bloodthirsty foreign mischief-makers, including Afghan mujahedin, Ukrainian fascists, Islamic fanatics, Chechen migrants from Jordan and, in a crude flourish that smacks of sexually frustrated barrack-room fantasy, female snipers from the Baltics in white tights.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19950311/ai_n13970807
Less credible were reports from Russian military sources regarding Ukrainian women fighting in the Chechen front line. Soon after the second Chechen war began in 1999 Russian accounts began to provide details of a Ukrainian unit of ski-borne women athletes/snipers fighting on the Chechen side. Known as “the White Tights,” these elusive fighters were at other times described as Latvians or Estonians. This bit of battlefield mythology was a survival from the 1994-1996 Chechen war.
http://www.jamestown.org/publications_details.php?volume_id=416&issue_id=3672&article_id=2370937
When the war in Chechnya soured overnight, the Russian leadership was aghast at losing to a non-white subject people. So President Boris Yeltsin & Co. started barking shrilly about 10-foot-tall foreign mercenaries -- about female Estonian snipers in white tights, all manner of silliness.
http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/7128-15.cfm
And so on. Oh wait, I know... the "white tights" were added to "make it more dramatic" :)
Also, who the heck is this "Gurza" the geroy?
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rotsen-1
16 years ago
"non-white subject people"
Chechens are as white as most Russians, they just happen to be muslim. Race and creed are two different things. Next youll be saying that my Migrelian family (who are blonde/fair) are not white because they are Georgian.
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overninethousand
16 years ago
Not me. It's racial theories of Matt Bivens from The Moscow Times/The Nation ;)
Nationalist Russians call Caucasian "blacks", too.
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gladimdim
16 years ago
Regarding crucifixion of russian soldiers you should watch this vid: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=UtWstdFn-Q4. Soldier saw it by his own eyes three soldiers crucified near destroyed BMP machine. He is talking about second chechen war. If it happened in Second war why not to happen in First war?
Gurza is a nickname of the real spetznaz soldier. His squad chechens called "Mad squad" because they could not catch it.
So don't talk about what you don't know.
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overninethousand
16 years ago
"Soldier is talking".
Yeah, I'm totally convinced.
I read a lot about this war, including several books, never heard about any "Gurza". Do this mythical figure even has a name? Because I just specifically searched for "Gurza" in the Chechen context, and all I found was a Russian 9mm handgun.
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bratsk2005
16 years ago
If you dont see it, that means it doesnt exist? A bit childish dont you think, and with everything WE DID see on chechen tapes, why its so hard to believe? I dont trust Russian newspapers either, and I dont think anyone does. I prefer watching documentaries with independent sources, not big tv stations in Russia since those are just like to do propaganda. I believe the soldiers in those documentaries, I just do not see a reason for them to lie. Here is a doc zabiti polk (forgotten battalion) with Gurza and Kobra talking about the Russian soldiers on the cross http://nordsky.msk.ru/indx2.php?id=18 and . It is of course in Russian so you can just dismiss it as Russian propaganda and move on. His real name is Aleksei Efent'ev (алексей ефентьев)http://www.redstar.ru/2006/10/24_10/2_02.html. He is of course a bit mythical. http://zavtra.ru/cgi/veil/data/zavtra/03/511/42.html here is an interview with him and here is a bit of just data on him http://www.spec-naz.org/forum//index.php?s=34ff0283f706e8151156fa341d459df0&showtopic=5824&pid=45875&st=0&#entry45875 , sorry it is all in Russian. He was supposed to be given a hero;s medal but because the first war embarrassing, he never received it, some people would rather forget it, that is why you dont hear much about him.
Hmm edit: I cannot write his name in Russian here as it comes up as gibberish, but if you follow the link you'll see the name and you can search on it.
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overninethousand
16 years ago
Yeah, I don't believe such stories. Why? Well, I'll give you an example of such myth in the English-language, via the guy called Arkady Babchenko:
"Chechnya cost thousands of lives on both sides. Horror was everywhere. Round the main square of one village were large crosses upon which Russian soldiers had been crucified and castrated. In retaliation Russian troops herded all the men they could find into the square, threw them down in piles and hacked at them. In half a day the whole village was castrated, then the battalion moved out. "
This is all very interesting, this anonymous "village" being castrated. Only I never heard about it (and I've read quite a bit). Did you? Thought so.
I'd like to see a photography or a video of such crucifiction and/or castration (so much obsession with another man's genitalia), as there were apparently plenty. There's none? Oh, shoot. What a pity. Maybe at least some of the "White Tights"? You know, those Baltic sniper amazons? Damn.
And the guy repeating again in another western article (and it's all mass-media, The Telegraph now):
"On another, his battalion enters a village where the main square is planted with large crosses upon which Russian soldiers have been crucified. 'They have been nailed up by their hands and each has a few bullet holes in his chest. They've all been castrated,' Babchenko writes. The Russians respond by rounding up all the local Chechen men and in half a day the whole village has been castrated. "
Yawn. But at least now you see how this little things called "self-promotion" and "myth-creation" work (the new myth is born: "castrated village" - it was in the press so it must be true).
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