Well Satan, as I’ve said before on this board, I worked for five years on three major business projects around the former Soviet Union and there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that this is a 100% ripoff scam. The Russian economy is a shambles and the Russians, who are well educated creative people, are constantly trying to find ways to get their hands on some cash.
Firstly, no-one inside Russia can have foreign deposits made into a Russian bank account without the bank reporting it to the relevant criminal gang who will contact the holder of the account for at least a 50% cut.
Secondly, there are, shall we say, long standing bad feelings between the Russians and Chechyns and the stumbling blocks preventing relief money from going from St. Petersburg to Chechnya would be insurmountable.
Remember a few years ago when those Red Cross nurses, including one Canadian, were machinegunned in their beds inside Chechnya? It is generally accepted that this was done by hard-line Russian agents trying to prevent any humanitarian assistance in Chechnya. In fact, there is some question about who did the apartment building bombings inside Russia that triggered the latest major war in Chechnya. No police or military installations were bombed, just apartment buildings.
The Chechyns are very scary people. Kidnapping was epidemic inside Chechnya. Two British engineers working on a cell phone system were beheaded and left at the side of a road.
Let me describe a traditional Chechyn courtship. Boy spots girl in village market. Boy stalks girl. Boy kidnaps girl and brings her to the family home where she is imprisoned for a year until her spirit is broken. Boy marries girl. On their wedding night, if the girl turns out to not be a virgin, boy drags girl outside and flings her naked into the street.
Another story - a few weeks ago there was a news story. Russian police stopped a military jeep at the Chechyn border. A Russian officer was driving and in the jeep were five wounded Chechyn soldiers - two Chechyns and three “arabs”. The police “immediately opened fire” and the three arabs were killed. Right. What we have here is a summary execution of some outsiders, maybe Afghans. The Russian officer was paid $25,000 US to smuggle the wounded out to medical care. The 25K was counterfeit.
Central Asia is a political swamp. The Iranians, the Turks, the Chinese, the Taliban, the good old USA, and God knows who else are all competing for influence. Chechnya is Russian territory but the people are Islamic hard liners. There is plenty of money in the moslem world and that is where the aid to Chechnya should come from. Like the terrible plight of Afghan women under the Taliban it is an Islamic problem and there is nothing the Christian western world can do. Any interference will only be resented and found objectionable. It is up to Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Libya… to deal with Islamic political matters.
There were a lot of ethnic Russians living inside Chechnya and they also suffered during the war. They couldn’t and can’t leave because most of them are living a desperate empoverished existance we can hardly imagine. Any aid out of Russia would be completely focused on, and consumed by, these ethnic Russians and none would go to Chechyns. It’s pretty hard to imagine any aid coming out of Russia for these people unless it came from their immediate relatives.
I and my Russian friends have a lot of hope for the new President Putin. His KGB background is an asset. The KGB alumni are the toughest smartest Russians with a good grip on reality. Putin may actually be principled enough to overcome greed and corruption and make the new Russia competent and functional, eventually easing the terrible suffering on all Russian territory including Chechnya. As for the Chechyn nationalists, this war has been going on for generations and, while shocking to us, the solution seems to be the massive police action that the Chechyn war was.
One last story from some Russian friends -
A Russian woman working in Moscow went to work every day even though no-one had received any salary for five years. What else can you do? At least you can network at work and maybe swap some potatoes for a fish. One day last year they noticed one of the women had stopped coming to work. After five days they checked her apartment and found her in bed, starved to death. They figure she had used up all her contacts for food, had nothing left to trade or sell, and just gave up and went to bed to die. This is in 1999!
There is no way on Earth that your donation to aid Chechnya is going to get there via Russia.