No one is looking for Babitsky
Chechen militants, who, according to Andrei Babitsky's friends, now have the journalist, may demand a ransom for his release. The head of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, Vladimir Rushailo, is confident that it will not come to this and Babitsky will soon show up in Turkey. Radio Liberty does not believe the minister, because Rushailo’s subordinates refused to put Andrei on the wanted list as a missing person.

Yesterday, the special correspondent of Komsomolskaya Pravda, Alexander Yevtushenko, a close friend of Andrei Babitsky, who is in Chechnya, called the Radio Liberty station. He said that, according to his information, Andrei could be held hostage by the militants. Referring to his sources in the special services, Yevtushenko claims that Babitsky was indeed exchanged for Russian military personnel and is now with the Chechen field commander Rizvan Chitigov. The latter’s fighters are holding defense in the village of Duba-Yurt, located at the entrance to the Argun Gorge.
Yevtushenko claims that Chitigov is a Chechen with American citizenship. He is a fairly well-known hostage dealer, so he can demand a ransom for Babitsky. There may be some truth in this statement. In any case, for each of the servicemen who were later exchanged for Babitsky, the militants wanted to receive $5-10 thousand. But despite the fact that they sent tapes to Russia where the torture of hostages was filmed, they were never paid the ransom. Naturally, you can demand much more for a journalist.
While checking information about Babitsky’s whereabouts, a Kommersant correspondent turned to representatives of the Chechen diaspora, but none of them knew about the existence of a field commander with the last name Chitigov. Moreover, the Chechens rightly noted that a person with an American passport would hardly fight in the mountains now, but would most likely go overseas. In addition, according to our sources, until recently the journalist was in the village of Alkhazurovo, which the feds also could not take control of. Alkhazurovo is located at the foot of the Black Mountains, which separate Georgia and Chechnya. And from this village several paths lead to Georgian territory.
When troops approached Alkhazurovo, most of the militants, leaving the cover group, went into the mountains. “If they can get to the border, then Babitsky should get in touch in a couple of days,” our interlocutor noted. “But given that the scandal with the journalist has reached the international level, the militants themselves are no longer interested in Babitsky’s release. Therefore, development events can be the most unexpected."
The head of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, Vladimir Rushailo, who visited Petrozavodsk yesterday, also told reporters that Babitsky is in the south of Chechnya and he allegedly has a “ticket from Istanbul via Warsaw to Minsk.”
But Svoboda does not believe either Yevtushenko, Rushailo, or the Chechens themselves. “All this is unverified data and its sources are unreliable,” say representatives of the radio station. By the way, yesterday they had another reason not to trust the police. Representatives of the Moscow Main Internal Affairs Directorate, who were approached by Lyudmila Babitskaya with a demand to put her husband on the wanted list as a missing person, refused to do so, citing the fact that the journalist disappeared not on their territory. At the same time, Babitskaya was advised to go to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but Lyudmila believes that “even more so they will refuse.”
MARINA Kommersant-LEPINA

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 28 dated February 19, 2000, p. 3

Authors:

Marina Lepina