Chechen rebels' deadly return

A series of brazen, well-coordinated attacks on official facilities in Russian regions bordering Chechnya Monday night left at least 58 dead and undermined Kremlin claims that violence in the Caucasus is giving way to stability.

The bloodshed comes just days after separatist Chechen rebels and Islamic militants signaled a change of tactics and promised "big attacks" against Russian forces prosecuting a five-year war.

President Vladimir Putin's policy on Chechnya has faced setbacks since the May 9 Grozny bombing that killed Ahmad Kadyrov, head of the Moscow-backed Chechen regime.

But while analysts say the scale of the simultaneous attacks was designed to impress - the estimated 200 fighters attacked 20 sites in the Russian region of Ingushetia killing an estimated 47 police and several pro-Moscow officials - it is unclear how long these tactics can last.

"This kind of attack is a major embarrassment for Mr. Putin - proof that the conflict in Chechnya is far from being resolved," says Oksana Antonenko, head of the Russia and Eurasia program at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London.

"The question is: Can the rebels sustain this sort of tactic for a long time?" says Ms. Antonenko. "I really question that because ... the Russians have been quite successful in destroying large-scale military formations, so what is now left of the resistance of the rebels is a relatively small group."

Putin vowed Tuesday "to find and destroy" the attackers. The Russian president -who declared a "turning point" in Chechnya in 2002 and said that the military stage of the war was over - noted that symbols of state power topped the target list.

Russia says it is fighting an "antiterrorism" war against rebels and foreign fighters in Chechnya, and has compared its fight to the US war on terror.

"It's very bad for Putin," says Alexei Malashenko, a Caucasus expert at the Carnegie Moscow Center, contacted in Berlin. "[The rebels] chose the place and the moment, exactly what they needed: They promised [big attacks], and they did it." [Editor's note: The original version had the Carnegie Moscow Center located in the wrong city.]

The magnitude of the strikes are "very important, because it means the war continues," says Mr. Malashenko. "It shows everybody it is possible to repeat [big] attacks and shows there is not a military solution."

Officials have said that just 500 rebels remain in thick mountain forests of southern Chechnya along the border with Georgia. Late last month the Interfax news agency quoted a regional Russian military chief asserting that rebels "are in fact completely disorganized" and on the run in groups of two or three.

But Tuesday Russian and Ingush officials said the fighters - some of them shouting "Alahu Akbar," or "God is great" - swept through the Ingush capital of Nazran and two border villages, striking at some 20 police, security, and administrative offices.

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