Infection rates are set to hit three million, but drug use and unsafe sex - the main causes - are rife. Alecc Luhn talks to those ignored by aid programmes Almost as soon as two HIV-prevention activists set up outside the pharmacy in the outskirts of Moscow with two huge backpacks of supplies, a skinny young man with mussed hair and an impish grin quickly walked up to them. "Do you have any ointment?" he asked, lifting up the leg of his tracksuit trousers to show a mass of red sores. [continues 1229 words]
Under New Laws Being Drawn Up Addicts Would Be Forced into Treatment or Jailed, and Dealers 'Treated Like Serial Killers' Drug dealers are to be "treated like serial killers" and could be sent to forced labour camps under harsh laws being drawn up by Russia's Kremlin-controlled parliament. Boris Gryzlov, the speaker of the state duma, the lower house, said a "total war on drugs" was needed to stem a soaring abuse rate driven by the flow of Afghan heroin through central Asia to Europe. [continues 685 words]
MOSCOW - They look like addicts anywhere in the world: tattered and vacant-eyed, they circle Moscow pharmacies known to sell prescription drugs illicitly, looking for something to inject for a quick high. Though public examples of Russia's problem with heroin are not new and seldom bring even raised eyebrows among locals, the issue has recently come to symbolize a broader failure. The country has become one of the world's low points in the effort to fight the spread of H.I.V., and unchecked intravenous drug use is the biggest cause, international health officials say. [continues 1173 words]
Russia faces an acute shortage of rehabilitation centers for drug users, Federal Drug Control Service chief Viktor Ivanov said at a government meeting Friday. He also said 30 metric tons of drugs have been seized by law enforcement and more than 6,000 drug dens have been closed since the start of the year, RIA-Novosti reported. More than 90,000 people have been "brought to justice" for drug-related crimes this year, he said, without elaborating. During the State Anti-Drug Committee meeting, Ivanov lamented that Russia lacks a unified, nationwide system of drug rehabs. Despite a population of 142 million people, the country has only three federal rehab centers, 27 in-patient hospital rehabs and 50 rehab centers funded by regional governments. [continues 72 words]
Slammed by an Opiate Tsunami, the Nation Is Still Largely Naive About the Risks of Addiction. the Toll Has Been Devastating. By Megan K. Stack, Reporting from Podolsk, Russia The young man named Anton is a member of Russia's "lost generation." He's the son of middle-class, college-educated engineers; he studied at a good university and became a truck sales manager in Moscow. He's also a 28-year-old heroin addict. [continues 1201 words]
During the last 10 years the number of drug users in Russia has increased by 50 percent, reaching a total of 550,000, according to new statistics. Experts believe, however, that the real number of drug addicts in the country could amount to 2.5 million or two percent of the population, said Vladimir Vladimirov, head of the Administrative Department of the Federal Drug Control Service, speaking at a press conference held in St. Petersburg on Friday. At least 90 percent of illegal drugs in Russia come from Afghanistan, with the bulk of that volume made up of opiates, including heroin, Vladimirov said, Rosbalt reported. [continues 476 words]
The Federal Drug Control Agency said Friday that Moscow should stop the transportation of cargo across its territory to U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan if they do not do more to cut the flow of heroin to Russia. "The granting of transport corridors to NATO forces in Afghanistan should be conditioned on a commitment to destroy sown areas, laboratories, stocks and other infrastructure of the Afghan drug business," agency head Viktor Ivanov told a meeting of ministers and lawmakers. "This would ... start the real process of improving the drug situation in Russia as well as in Central Asian and European countries," he said. [continues 114 words]
Surge In Abuse Blamed On West's Failings In Afghanistan, But Addicts Go Untreated At a playground just off the busy Prospekt Mira thoroughfare in central Moscow, there aren't any children playing on the swings. The slide is covered in dirty snow, the sandpit is strewn with empty vodka bottles and, on close inspection, a few used syringes. Mothers whisper to each other that the playground is the home of narkomany - drug addicts - and wheel their pushchairs swiftly past. It's just one small sign of a vast hidden epidemic of heroin use that Russian officials and civil society groups say threatens the very existence of the nation. "It's a threat to our national security, our society, and our civilisation itself," said Viktor Ivanov, Russia's top drugs official, at a meeting with reporters recently. He estimated that there are more than two million drug addicts in Russia, which amounts to one addict for every 50 Russians of working age, a level that is up to eight times higher than in EU countries. [continues 669 words]
President Vladimir Putin has ordered the creation of the State Anti-Drug Committee, an agency similar to already existing Anti-Terror Committee which Putin praised during his recent televised interview. On October 20 the Kremlin press center reported that the Russian president had signed a decree ordering the creation of the new body to fight drug addiction and trafficking. Putin appointed the head of the Federal Anti-Drug Service, Viktor Cherkesov, the chairman of the new law enforcement body. Under the decree, anti-drug commissions will be set up in all Russian regions and be chaired by local governors. [continues 477 words]
MOSCOW -- Tensions within the Kremlin ahead of the departure of President Vladimir Putin have turned into a public battle among Russia's secretive security interests. Mr. Putin's top drug fighter offered a look yesterday into the kind of dispute that is normally suppressed by the Kremlin. He warned in an open letter that the security-agency battle, which has led to corruption charges and arrests, could weaken the cadre that rules Russia and undermine the country. Mr. Cherkesov's appeal followed last week's arrests of senior officers of his Federal Drug Control Service by agents of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the main successor to the KGB. Moscow newspapers described the arrests as part of a long-running rivalry between Kremlin security-service elites, pitting Mr. Cherkesov against Mr. Putin's powerful deputy chief of staff, Igor Sechin, and other members of Mr. Putin's inner circle. [continues 382 words]
Moscow police on Saturday suppressed a rally for the legalization of marijuana, detaining 30 people and beating many more. Participants of the Marijuana March were fined and sentenced to 15 days in jail. The Marijuana Legalization League attempted to stage a rally in downtown Moscow on Saturday to demand the legalization of marijuana in Russia. Police detained the demonstrators, beating several people with truncheons. The rally was to become part of the Global Marijuana March which brings protestors to the streets in cities all over the world. This was the fifth attempt to stage the Marijuana Rally in Moscow. [continues 76 words]
Moscow police broke up a march calling for the legalization of marijuana for medical purposes on Saturday, charging four people with promoting the use of an illegal drug. One participant remained in custody Sunday, while the others, three young women, were ordered by the Presnensky District Court to pay a fine of 4,500 rubles each, Ekho Moskvy radio reported. Dozens of people turned up for the so-called Hemp March on the Arbat, Lubyansky Proyezd and around the All-Russian Exhibition Center, and about 40 of them were detained by police, Ekho Moskvy said. [continues 115 words]
ST. PETERSBURG -- Proposed legislation to force young drug addicts into treatment is stirring up an outcry from doctors, who call the bill the wrong solution to a growing problem. The bill, which the State Duma is expected to start debating soon, would enable schools to send children to treatment centers without their parents' consent. The final decision in each case would be left up to a judge. Duma Deputy Valentina Ivanova, a supporter of the bill, said urgent steps needed to be taken to separate children who use drugs from those who do not. [continues 419 words]
Hemp Has a Bad Rap for Being the Marijuana Plant. but One Russian Scientist Is Proposing a Drug-Free Variety to Put Naysayers at Ease While Providing Material for Clothing and Oil for Cooking. ST. PETERSBURG, Russia -- The sign on Sergei Grigoryev's office door says "Narcobaron," or drug baron, over a faint picture of a marijuana leaf. That's his way of weathering the joshing he gets for doing nothing more than showing up for work each day. After all, Grigoryev promotes hemp. [continues 975 words]
AIDS continues to kill 8,000 people around the world each day. More than 38 million people are now living with HIV, with an increasing number of new infections among women and girls. Only one in five people living with HIV have access to prevention and treatment services. Worldwide, fifteen million children have been orphaned as a result of AIDS. AIDS is a global emergency and poses one of the most formidable challenges to the social development, progress and stability of the world. AIDS takes its heaviest toll among the young and most productive -- people aged 20 to 40 -- and the epidemic continues to threaten social stability and national security. [continues 1151 words]
Officially, Exchanges 'Taboo' In Nation With High HIV Rate MOSCOW -- Every Wednesday afternoon, Petya Nikitenko invites into his office some of the men and women Russia usually tries to ignore. Some have spent time in jail or have sold sex. All have abused drugs. Now that they have come for help, Nikitenko counsels them on the dangers of using intravenous drugs. One of the risks is that, by sharing needles, they will become infected with HIV. What he does not do - and what HIV-prevention programs in Russia often cannot do without bringing unwelcome attention from the government - is distribute clean needles that could help prevent the spread of the virus. [continues 1909 words]
Vanya Markov's statistics might be overblown, but they were certainly in the spirit of "March in the Name of Life," an anti-drug rally held Monday on central Moscow's Arbat. "Every day 1 million people die because of drugs," said Markov, 14. "They use them because they don't respect themselves." The march of about 150 young people waving banners and carrying colorful balloons down the Arbat was one of several rallies held across the country to commemorate the United Nations' International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking. [continues 253 words]
The nation's chief epidemiologist and State Duma deputies pledged support Thursday for the war on AIDS but avoided discussing hard-hit groups such as prostitutes, drug users and homosexuals, in contrast with officials from other countries, including China and India. Their comments came at a conference featuring lawmakers from Germany, Britain, China, India and Brazil in advance of the G8 summit, where AIDS is expected to be prominently discussed. Chief epidemiologist Gennady Onishchenko and Tatyana Yakovleva, head of the Duma's Public Health Committee, warned the disease was spreading into the general public and stressed the need for vaccines and free treatment for those who were infected. Onishchenko added that HIV would be extensively discussed at the Group of Eight summit in St. Petersburg in July. [continues 439 words]
It's been a rough couple of weeks for drug cops. Internal affairs officers on Saturday arrested three narcotics officers and two Moscow policemen on charges of extorting $2,000 from a Moscow region woman and beating up an undercover cop posing as a drug dealer. The suspects, three officers from the Federal Drug Control Service's Moscow branch and two officers from the Mitino city police precinct, were arrested in the Moscow region town of Krasnogorsk, a source at the Interior Ministry's internal affairs department told Kommersant. [continues 336 words]
The Russian government has once again reversed itself on the subject of drug enforcement, drastically lowering the amounts of illegal drugs that are considered "large" -- large enough to land a person behind bars. Why does this matter? Arresting and jailing drug dealers is fair: Hardly anyone would argue with that. Some people even think it's effective in preventing drug use. Suppose that's true. Now consider the way it's done in Russia. A few years back, I spent time with people staffing buses that distribute clean needles to drug users (buses like these operate or have operated in a number of cities, but the Moscow government has banned their use here). There were a couple of things that I saw over and over again, in different cities. [continues 545 words]
One of the benefits of being Russian is that there is never a lack of constructive advice on sensitive social matters like immigration and ethnic and religious tolerance - not only from Russia's own liberals, but from friendly foreign countries and international nongovernmental organizations that are glad to instruct Russia on its duty to move toward the democratic standards of an open society. Russia need only adopt advanced Western models, they insist, and all will be well. Then again, maybe not. Recently, the European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia made the following statement in a report on anti-Jewish violence in EU countries: "France, Belgium, the Netherlands and the U.K. witnessed rather serious anti-Semitic incidents such as numerous physical attacks and insults directed against Jews and the vandalism of Jewish institutions - synagogues, shops, cemeteries." Evidently, even some of Europe's longest-established democracies are not immune to such ugly behavior. [continues 896 words]
The Federal Drug Control Service is opaque and prone to corruption, while its rank-and-file staff lack any clear-cut mission and often commit abuses, according to a scathing independent study of the two-year-old agency released Tuesday. The report, written under the auspices of the Moscow Helsinki Group, a human rights organization, and Indem, an anti-corruption think tank, is the latest blow to the Federal Drug Control Service, which President Vladimir Putin created to tackle the country's drug problem. The agency has been repeatedly accused of ignoring the real problems behind drug abuse and instead chasing veterinarians and dacha poppy-growers to pad its arrest statistics. [continues 745 words]
Russia Uses Pot As Animal Feed MOSCOW - Russia's long winter will just fly by for a herd of Russian cows which, a newspaper reported on Tuesday, will be fed confiscated marijuana over the cold months. Drug workers said they adopted the unusual form of animal husbandry after they were forced to destroy the sunflowers and maize crops that the 40 tonnes of marijuana had been planted among, Novye Izvestia daily reported. "There is simply no other way out. You see, the fields are planted with feed crops and if we remove it all the cows will have nothing to eat," a Federal Drugs Control Service spokeswoman for the Urals region of Sverdlovsk told the paper. [continues 54 words]
Editor, It appears that Russia is about to follow the path of the United States in its approach to illegal drugs. My advice is: Don't do it. The U.S. anti-drug policy has been an absolute disaster. The budget to fight illegal drugs has grown by 29,500 percent in the last 36 years. The results: Illegal drugs are just as available in the United States today as they were in 1969. Attempting to limit the supply of any desired product just makes them more profitable. It doesn't get rid of them. Russia should look at U.S. drug policies carefully -- then do the opposite. Kirk Muse Mesa, AZ [end]
Andrei leaned back on the couch, hands on his balding pate, and sighed. "This happens every time," he said. A veteran city police investigator, Andrei had planned to bust a heroin dealer later that day, but the small-time dealer his informants had been tracking had split town. It was a Sunday afternoon, and he was in the office as usual. Andrei, 39, is a foot soldier in Russia's war on drugs, an undertaking that has received the vocal backing of President Vladimir Putin but which critics claim has accomplished little more than throwing minor drug offenders into the notoriously overcrowded prison system, more notable for rampant tuberculosis and AIDS than its corrective capabilities. [continues 2065 words]
MOSCOW -- When an urgent telephone summons came in to the Bon-Pet clinic last October, Alexander Duka responded as he always did for an emergency: He loaded up his medical bag, set off in his car and prepared to operate on an injured dog. But when he arrived at the address the caller had given and prepared a syringe with the anesthetic ketamine, Duka found himself under arrest in a sting operation conducted by undercover agents of Russia's powerful new drug-fighting agency. [continues 1368 words]
VLADIMIR -- Anti-drug police in the Vladimir region announced the conviction of a veterinarian for selling a powerful anesthetic before a judge delivered her verdict, dealing a new blow to the much-maligned reputation of the Federal Drug Control Service and raising new questions about the independence of the courts. Judge Yelena Melkova of Vladimir's Frunzensky District Court had just left the room to prepare her verdict last Thursday when Svetlana Shashilova, the spokeswoman for the local branch of the drug control service, started handing out a statement that said veterinarian Olga Tanayeva, 27, was guilty of selling ketamine. [continues 266 words]
MOSCOW, Oct. 17 - Forensic analysis of the remains of 31 militants who seized a public school in Beslan last month has determined that all of them were dependent on drugs, a senior law enforcement official said in a statement reported Sunday by Russian news agencies. The official, Nikolai Shepel, the deputy prosecutor general of Russia's southern federal district, also said blood tests had found very high levels of heroin and morphine among a majority of the attackers who died as the siege ended, "which indicates that they were long-term drug addicts and had been using drugs permanently while preparing for the terrorist attack," according to the Interfax wire service. [continues 258 words]
Forensic analysis of the remains of 31 militants who seized the public school in Beslan last month has determined that all of them were dependent on drugs, a senior law enforcement official said in a statement reported by Russian news agencies Sunday. Nikolai Shepel, the deputy prosecutor general of Russia's southern federal district, also said that blood tests had found very high levels of heroin and morphine among a majority of the attackers who died at the siege, "which indicates that they were long-term drug addicts and had been using drugs permanently while preparing for the terrorist attack," according to the Interfax wire service. [continues 301 words]
Moscow - All the hostage-takers who seized Beslan's School No 1 on September 1 were drug addicts and under the influence of narcotics throughout the 52-hour siege, Russia's deputy Prosecutor General said yesterday. In a statement to the Interfax news agency, Nikolay Shepel said that forensic tests on the extremists' corpses had shown that 22 of the 32 hostage-takers had been on hard drugs and had regularly injected substances such as heroin and morphine, while the other 10 had been using softer drugs. [continues 388 words]
Veterinarians, Booksellers Have Been Raid Targets MOSCOW - When an urgent telephone summons came in to the Bon-Pet clinic last October, Alexander Duka responded as always: He loaded his medical bag and set off in his car, prepared to operate on an injured dog. But when he arrived at the address and prepared a syringe with the anesthetic ketamine, Duka found himself under arrest in a sting operation conducted by undercover agents of Russia's powerful new drug-fighting agency. Formed a year ago to bring the full force of the country's law enforcement to bear against a growing drug crisis, the agency -- headed by a close friend of President Vladimir Putin from the KGB -- has an army of 40,000, four times larger than the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. [continues 789 words]
Planning on selling that vintage Grateful Dead T-shirt from your college days? Well, don't look for a buyer in Russia. With the narcotics police launching a nationwide campaign against merchandise depicting marijuana leaves, you might just get in trouble with the law. Last week, agents from the Federal Drug Control Service charged a shopkeeper in Arkhangelsk for distributing "drug propaganda." His offense? Selling removable cellphone covers that feature an image of a cannabis leaf. The vendor, an employee of cellphone store chain Yevroset, faces a 4,000 ruble ($140) fine if found guilty. [continues 627 words]
The UN's top drug control official called on Russia on Friday to take action to stem demand for drugs, especially heroin, within its borders and said he is concerned about the planned removal of Russian forces from the Afghan-Tajik border, where they are engaged in anti-drug trafficking operations. Russia has one of the highest levels of opiate abuse in the world, at around 2.1 percent of those aged 15 to 64, or about 2 million people, according to a new United Nations World Drug Report presented in Moscow on Friday by the official, Antonio Maria Costa. [continues 395 words]
MOSCOW - Vladimir Loginov, 25 years old but with the tired eyes of a man much older, sat reading the Russian criminal code and explaining his fate. He had been arrested on the streets here in 1999, accused of possessing roughly a quarter gram of heroin. He spent five years and two months in prison. By the time he left, he had contracted tuberculosis. Under a new Russian drug policy, such a bleak journey through the country's penal system for small-scale drug possession has become much less likely. [continues 662 words]
(MOSCOW) Vladimir Loginov, 25 years old but with the tired eyes of a man much older, sat reading the Russian criminal code and explaining his fate. He had been arrested on the streets in 1999, accused of possessing approximately a quarter gram of heroin. He spent five years and two months in prison. By the time he left, he had contracted tuberculosis. Under a new Russian drug policy, such a bleak journey through the country's penal system for small-scale drug possession has become much less likely. After years of harsh penalties for people convicted of possessing small amounts of illegal drugs, Russia has liberalized policies underpinning the law. [continues 569 words]
Under a new law that came into effect this week, drug users can possess a greatly increased amount of an illegal substance -- for instance, 20 grams of marijuana or 1.5 grams of cocaine -- without the risk of being thrown in jail. The law has been criticized by the Federal Anti-Drug Service, which says it hampers the battle against drugs, but praised by those who work to rehabilitate drug addicts, who predict more addicts will now seek help. President Vladimir Putin signed an amendment to the Criminal Code in December stipulating that possession of no more than 10 times the amount of a "single dose" would now be considered an administrative infraction rather than a criminal offense. Punishment would be a fine of no more than 40,000 rubles ($1,380) or community service. [continues 414 words]
Russia is withdrawing its frontier troops from the Tajik-Afghan border in a move that will leave a porous border for drug traffickers, a Russian official said in an interview with Nezavisimaya Gazeta Wednesday. "We are pulling out of Tajikistan in general," First Deputy Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Trubnikov told Nezavisimaya Gazeta. "The result will be a porous border. Porous means drugs." Russian-led troops have helped to maintain stability in Tajikistan since a 1992-97 civil war. They monitor over 90 percent of the remote 1,344km (840-mile) Tajik border with Afghanistan, the world's top opium producer. [continues 175 words]
One night last November, men in camouflage wearing ski masks and wielding Kalashnikovs burst into the popular nightclub Propaganda and ordered people up against the wall. "It looked like 'Nord-Ost,'" said Roman Alyokhin, director of the nightclub in central Moscow, referring to the storming of the Dubrovka theater by Chechen militants in October 2002. "Only after three or four minutes did they finally identify themselves." They were agents from the newly formed anti-drug force. They searched club-goers for illegal substances, examined them for signs of drug use and also seized dozens of video surveillance cassettes, which Alyokhin said was illegal. Propaganda filed a complaint with the Prosecutor General's Office, but nothing ever came of it, he said. [continues 1355 words]
A controversial publishing house accused the Federal Anti-Drug Service of censorship Tuesday after it ordered that a book about marijuana be pulled from the shelves. The service issued the order last week, citing a ruling two weeks ago by an Ulyanovsk court that declared the book "Marijuana, the Forbidden Medicine" to be drug propaganda. At a press conference Tuesday, Ultra Kultura, which published the Russian translation, said the order was reminiscent of Soviet censorship. "Society has a right to access to information," Ultra Kultura editor Vladimir Kharitonov said. "The government is starting to interfere in ways we have not seen for a long, long time." [continues 267 words]
Two men walk into a clinic to get their cat spayed. What sounds like the opening line of a dubious joke is in fact the beginning of one of many criminal investigations that has left veterinarians and animal lovers up in arms. According to the owner of a Moscow pet clinic, when the vet brought out a syringe to give the cat in question a shot, the men identified themselves as agents of a narcotics squad -- and raided the premises for a banned drug. [continues 703 words]
MOSCOW, There exists within Russia itself a significant base for the production of illegal narcotics. As reported by Rosbalt, Viktor Cherkesov spoke on this today at the first general meeting of the State Committee to Control the Use of Narcotic and Psychotropic Substances, which he heads. Citing the views of specialists, he said marijuana currently grows wild on 1 million hectares of Russian land. Moreover, he said, a second native source of raw material for drug production has increased in recent years: because of their poverty, greater numbers of people are cultivating marijuana and poppies on their private plots. Cherkesov said this raw material was then going out to the biggest cities of Russia and even to other countries. [continues 112 words]
MOSCOW -- Calling attention to a growing sore spot between Washington and Moscow, Russia's newly appointed top drug cop said the U.S. could do more to reduce the flow of heroin from Afghanistan. Gen. Viktor Cherkessov, whose appointment this spring to head Russia's huge new drug-enforcement agency signals Moscow's new emphasis on the problem, said in an interview recently that drug production in Afghanistan has increased "catastrophically." Asked if the U.S. is doing enough to help stem the problem, he chose his words carefully, saying that America isn't using its vast resources "to the fullest extent" to curtail production of Afghan opium. [continues 515 words]
YOL, Tajikistan -- Warrant Officer Amirali Niyozov and his men trekked for five hours to reach the isolated mountain spot near the Afghan border where they had been tipped off that a drug drop was going down. After four hours lying in wait, Niyozov heard footsteps: Afghans were making their way across the barren slopes. "Who's there?" he shouted, firing warning shots into the air before training them on the suspected drug traffickers. They returned fire -- and then melted away into the night, leaving behind 31 kilograms of drugs. [continues 779 words]
Russians and Ukrainians are once again being made victims of a utopian dream. Since the end of communism in 1991, these countries (and others) have experienced a dramatic increase in the use of illicit drugs. They have responded with draconian policies that mirror the simplistic message of a drug-free society espoused by UN drug treaties and the institutions that seek to enforce them. Today, these policies are contributing to an explosion of HIV infections in much of the developing world. [continues 827 words]
All leaders wanted to do was celebrate the history of their small town by creating a flag everyone would be proud to see flying above the rooftops. Instead, they have been mocked on national television for making a local plant their emblem. The local plant in question is cannabis. Some 250 kilometers southwest of Moscow in the Bryansk region, a yellow, green and white flag now flies above the town hall. In the top left-hand corner is the plant more widely known for its hallucinogenic qualities and for being depicted on T-shirts and student posters. [continues 363 words]
A new stage of the struggle against drug spreading has started in Russia. A special briefing was held in Russia's Ministry for Internal Affairs on February 20, where Deputy Chief of the investigation department of the Interior Ministry Committee of Inquiry, Justice Colonel Yury Alekseyev delivered a report. He said that 94 tons of illegal drugs were arrested in Russia in 2002. Over the past ten years the number of crimes connected with drug trafficking increased 11 times; there were 189.676 crimes connected with drugs in Russia in 2002. The share of criminal cases connected with drug trafficking made up 13% - 16.5% of the total amount of instituted criminal proceedings. In the words of Yury Alekseyev, the scale of crimes connected with drug distribution is increasing every year. What must the Russian Ministry for Internal Affairs do to improve the situation? [continues 913 words]
A Russian soldier apparently under the influence of narcotics opened fire on fellow servicemen, killing at least eight and wounding three others, the military said. Denis Solovyov fired at a tent as his 11 comrades were resting along the border with Georgia in the Caucasus Mountains, the military said. Officials said Solovyov may have eaten hallucinogenic mushrooms, which grow in the area. [end]
White House Rejects Attack Threat By Russia, Trains Georgia Officers PANKISI GORGE, Georgia - They call it a gorge, but the newest front on the war on terrorism looks more like a wide and verdant valley, with cornfields and grape arbors down low on the gentle slopes, and sheep, goats and terrorists above. The Pankisi Gorge, barely seven miles long, is home to five villages, 10,000 peasants and various covens of kidnappers, spies, thieves, drug lords and arms dealers -- plus several hundred Chechen guerrilla fighters, Al-Qaida commanders and Islamist holy warriors. U.S. intelligence officials say they have tracked several Al-Qaida leaders to the gorge, and the regional governor calls the Pankisi "a terrorist enclave." [continues 801 words]
I'm writing about: "Putin Urges Action Against Drugs" (9-5-02). It appears that Russia is about to follow the path of The United States in its battle against drugs. Don't do it. The U. S. drug policy has been an absolute total disaster. The U. S. has increased its drug enforcement budget by a whopping 29,500 percent in the past 32 years. The net result: anybody in the U. S. that wants drugs can still get them--just as easily as in 1969. [continues 88 words]
RYAZAN, Central Russia -- Out of work and separated from his wife, Yury takes the only job he can find -- chauffeuring prostitutes in this provincial city. The women are all using heroin. He becomes close to one, has an affair with her, and one evening while drunk accepts her challenge to shoot up "just once." In a matter of days, Yury is addicted. Months later, he learns he is HIV positive. He contemplates suicide. Yet the shock of realizing he might die of AIDS gets him off drugs. He goes through two weeks of gut-wrenching withdrawal and stays off the stuff. [continues 817 words]
Inside Russia
