Lynx - I never said 'Ruskies bad - chechens good'. And where did I accuse Boroda of being commander of the Russian armed forces in Chechnya? He isn't responsible - but his goverment is, IMO.
I'm sorry if it offends you that I find it hard to accept the output of news organisations from a country that was under communism for 70 years. I really don't think that, despite the changes in the last 10 years, that you can compare the BBC or any Western news organisation with a Russian contemporary. It's naive to think that government control over the media can be washed away so suddenly. More specifically, I think old habits die hard, in this case in the way the Russian government handles the 'free' media. But things are changing.
Western presses did show both sides when possible - for instance the bombing of that Moscow apartment block - but also the indescriminate shelling of Grozny. As for it being a warzone, and that the Russians would see journalists as spies - that sums up the whole attitude of the Russian government to the media. War correspondants go everywhere in a war - in the Gulf War they were in Baghdad, Kuwait City, Tehran etc. It's the same with Kosovo and the Balkans - there were reports coming in from Serbia itself about the effect of the bombing. I don't think the Western media is above bias - I wouldn't just blindly agree with a report just because it came from the BBC, for example. I don't think, on the other hand, that the BBC or CNN would DELIBERATELY mislead on an issue. There are far too many other organisations, such as newspapers, which scream about such an action. Their reputation would never recover.
It's not that I don't accept what you're saying Boroda - I'm just going on what I've heard from other people living in Russia, or people like Babitsky. Sure the rebels did terrible things, and deserve to be labelled as 'gangsters' to some extent. But so did the Russian forces. I just think it wasn't a clean cut as 'terrorists versus glorious Russian armed forces'. What would people like Babitsky have to gain by lying, whereas I can see why the government would censor the output of the news programs, hiding the fact that so many of their young soldiers were being killed, and were killing so many civilians in the process.
Why did only one small radio station carry Babitsky's reports?
How can anyone justify the incarceration of kids as young as twelve, who are somehow judged to be of fighting age? Their families had no idea where they were being taken - perhaps they still don't know?
