zachistka (13. 556)

Taking place on this day in 2001, Russian forces in Alkhan-Kala undertook a special military operation known by the above euphemism as зачистка, the equivalent of “mopping up” as part of the Second Chechen War to eliminate insurgent separatists and organised crime. Chechnya (the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, named after tje river that was the line of demarcation) had secured de facto independence from Russia in 1996 but Moscow found the arrangement increasingly less acceptable, accusing Georgia of foment unrest, when the gauged the country as ungovernable, overrun by armed gangs and ultimately proclaiming itself as a Islamic republic and accused of invading neighbouring Dagestan. The siege of the small town, the door-to-door slaughter of civilians in search of the warlord is characteristic of suppression of rebel elements and ethic cleansing and has been repeated in Georgia, Azerbaijan and Ukraine and in other breakaway republics, all territories along the Caspian corridor annexed from the Persian Empire under Peter the Great.