Dear Putin, Hello, we are writing to you in order to bring to your attention the Chechens history as well as its

reasons for independence. We would like to open your eyes to not only that issue but a few other issues that Russia has to deal with. Russia faces many issues regarding political and economical and aside from that environmental. Some economical issues that Russia has been tied down with is that Russias population is decreasing. Bigger problems are corruption as well as terrorism. Russia also deals with lots of environmental issues which all started in the Soviet times. Some of the environmental issues that Russia faces is pollution, lots of energy use, deforestation, and lastly, nuclear waste. Although I am not satisfied with these issues and how they are being handled, I wrote to you in order to talk about another bigger issue that I hope gets solved very soon. That issue would be the Chechens needing independence from Russia. Let us just remind you of some of the stuff that we have had to deal with in the past as well as so Chechen history. The Chechens use to be independent before we were sovietized back in 1912. There is too much culture behind the Chechens to be part of Russia. We practice Sunni Islam, and now Russian words are being taken out. Ive noticed more Chechens picking up the Russian language now, and that is totally unfair that our culture is changed just because we are a part of Russia. We have a long history of bloodshed and have been through lots of wars. In the 19th and 20th centuries, we are threatened with war. As we still do currently, we longed for our independence. Boris Yeltsin declined our negotiations because Russia did not like the declare. There were two brutal wars in the 1990s. The first was in order to establish independence from Russia. This was not a successful war what so ever. Not only did it kill a ton of Russian troops, but it also killed many Chechens. In this first war, our specialist leader, Dzhokhar Dudayev, was also killed. The second war lasted nine years and started as an invasion. Before all of that, you frequently bombed us in the 1800s as a country. The thought of that is so sickening especially because we are supposed to be a unit, however it is so difficult to be a unit when we were bombed and fought against the people that we are to get along and be okay with. There was a treaty signed, however; the treaty was to stop the war not for us to have our independence. Ever since the Soviets fell, we celebrate our independence on November 9th. We want to celebrate it as an actual independent country though, we are done pretending. Although we are not independent, we still consider ourselves as a free state. After our war with Russia, food and medical supplies were difficult to find. That really affected us as a whole. Back then, women use to do the traditional cooking and cleaning. Now however, women have higher educations and some now have other occupations. The traditional occupation of men use to be sheep farmers now, oil is a big part of our economy. Oil being a big part of our economy is one of the main reasons why Russia wants our land so badly and will not let us become independent. Our land is also extremely fertile and that is another reason as to why Russia will not separate. Our population of about 1.3 million people is a providence (republic) is Russia. Our land is awesome because we have lots of oil as well as fertile land, but it is ours. We want it, all to ourselves. It is completely unfair that we are not independent and have been suffering from

non separation for all these years. We feel as though we would be more successful without being a part of Russia. I hope that you read all of the history of the Chechens in this leader then reconsider your decisions and thoughts. We hope to hear back from you shortly.

Sincerely, The Chechens.