Chechen refugees claim Russian army looting some villages

Published: Friday, December 24, 1999

SLEPTSOVSKAYA, Russia {AP} The Russian soldiers forced their way into Visani Bogatirov's house and took his dishes, food, blankets, shoes and a fur coat. They stole his car and shot his tractor to pieces.

Later, the Russians came back and killed his cow, said the 54-year-old refugee, sitting on a plank bed in a muddy and drafty tent in the Sputnik refugee camp near the Chechen border.

According to multiple accounts by refugees, human rights workers and local police, Russian soldiers have done more than wage war in Chechnya they have been engaged in widespread looting.

In some towns, soldiers have looted nearly every house, according to Peter Bouckaert, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, a New York-based human rights group.

"We've spoken to people whose floorboards were taken" for firewood, he said.

Soldiers help themselves to just about anything that can be loaded onto a truck or a tank, but focus on food, bedding and warm clothes, he said. The looting occurs most in villages that resisted Russia's advance, while other villages have been left almost untouched.

The Russian army, for years beset by financial problems and now faced with supporting about 100,000 soldiers in the Chechen operation, appears to be living off the land, according to refugee claims.

The underfunded Russian military is short of supplies, soldiers sometimes go without food and their clothing often is old and ragged. The abandoned villages of Chechnya are an alluring target.

"You can't have that wide-scale looting and not have the command know about it," said Bouckaert, who has interviewed hundred of refugees. "There is at least tacit approval."