Chechen Leader Is Bluffing With Chemical Weapons Threat, Expert Says

Chechen militant leader Shamil Basayev was bluffing in his recent threats to conduct chemical weapons attacks against Russia, an expert said yesterday on the Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy (see GSN, March 30). 

Chechen militants do not have the financial means to bribe Russian officials to obtain chemical weapons nor do they have the expertise to produce them, said Union for Chemical Safety President Lev Fedorov

“Do you think a Chechen will climb over the fence to steal an unknown bomb from an unknown storage place? Do you think he wants to kill himself?  Getting chemical weapons out of storage requires money. The sum must be very good, a very attractive sum, so that the head of the facility, the head of the storage place and a small-rank officer, all three of them, can get what they want and take what they want out of the storage place. The Chechens don’t have this kind of money. This is impossible,” Fedorov said (Ekho Moskvy/BBC Monitoring, March 30).

Back to top
About Newswire  |  Contact National Journal  |  Re-Use Guidelines © Copyright 2008 by National Journal Group, Inc. The material in this section is produced independently for NTI by National Journal Group, Inc. Any reproduction or retransmission, in whole or in part, is a violation of federal law and is strictly prohibited without the consent of the National Journal Group, Inc. All rights reserved.