Does the Georgian-Russian rapprochement threaten Chechens?
Jean-Christophe Peuch: 2/15/04 A EurasiaNet Partner Post from RFE/RL Assessing the results of the visit Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili recently paid to Moscow, a high-ranking Kremlin official said Russia had found a reliable partner in the newly elected South Caucasus leader. President Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy adviser, Sergei Prikhodko, said on 11 February that the Kremlin saw in Saakashvili a “responsible politician who is ready to answer for what is happening in Georgia.” The two presidents, who held a four-hour meeting at the Kremlin that same day, vowed to work toward boosting bilateral ties and repairing what Saakashvili described as “years of enmity and misunderstanding” between Tbilisi and Moscow. One of the main focuses of the Kremlin talks was the situation in Russia’s breakaway republic of Chechnya, which borders Georgia to the north. Approximately one-tenth of the 800-kilometer-long Russian-Georgian border runs along Chechnya. Talking to reporters after his me
