Russia's President elect has said that he will pursue the military campaign in Chechnya to the end. Vladimir Putin told Russian troops that their bravery and dignity was a sure guarantee that Chechnya would, as he put it, be freed of bandits. He made his comments after he was declared the outright winner in yesterday's presidential elections, securing nearly 53% of the vote. Mr Putin has received congratulations from many world leaders, but there have been appeals to him to address the situation in the breakaway republic.
International observers, who were monitoring Russia's presidential polls, have expressed concern at the manner in which the country's media covered the campaign. Analysts from the European Institute for the Media, which is funded by the European Union, accused two television channels that are partly owned by the Government, of bias towards Mr Putin.
Mr Putin has vowed to work on a detailed economic programme for Russia, to encourage overseas investment and to end years of chaos and upheaval. The country's Foreign Minister, Igor Ivanov, said that changes would be made to Russia's foreign policy. He said that the alterations were linked to profound changes that had occurred in the world.
The Communist challenger, Gennady Zyuganov, is in second place having won 30% support, 22 percentage points behind Mr Putin. Mr Zyuganov has accused the Russian government of falsifying the results and claims that the Communist vote exceeded more than 40%.
