title: Larry King

text: King related his heart attack experience in an interview in the 2014 British documentary film "The Widowmaker", which advocates for coronary calcium scanning to motivate preventive cardiology and highlights the financial conflicts of interest in the widespread use of coronary stents. He received annual chest X-rays to monitor his heart condition. During his 2017 examination, doctors discovered a malignant tumor in his lung. It was then successfully removed with surgery.


title: Larry King

text: On April 23, 2019, King underwent a scheduled angioplasty and also had stents inserted. It was erroneously reported that he had another heart attack along with heart failure; these claims were later retracted. He returned to "Politicking with Larry King" on August 15. On November 27, he said he had had a stroke in March, and was in a coma "for weeks". He later admitted he had contemplated suicide following the stroke, telling Los Angeles television station KTLA, "I thought I was just going to bite the bullet. I didn't want to live this way."


title: Larry King

text: On January 2, 2021, it was revealed that King had been hospitalized with COVID-19 ten days earlier in a Los Angeles hospital. King's widow Shawn Southwick-King told "Entertainment Tonight" that he had recovered from COVID-19, but died of sepsis as a complication on January 23, 2021, at the age of 87 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles. According to the death certificate obtained by "People" magazine, sepsis was the immediate cause of death. It also listed two underlying conditions leading to the infection – acute hypoxemic respiratory failure and end-stage renal disease.


title: Larry King

text: In February 2021, it was reported that Shawn had gone to court to contest the deceased's handwritten will written in 2019, which had left his estate (valued at $2 million) to his five surviving children. Shawn alleges her stepson Larry King Jr. exerted undue influence over his father towards the end of his life, and that the handwritten will conflicts with a will he signed in 2015, in which she was named executor of his estate. This does not include more valuable "assets that were held in trusts".


title: Larry King

text: King received many broadcasting awards. He won the Peabody Award for Excellence in broadcasting for both his radio (1982) and television (1992) shows. He also won ten CableACE Awards for Best Interviewer and for Best Talk Show Series.


title: Larry King

text: In 1989, King was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame, and in 1996 to the Broadcasters' Hall of Fame. In 2002, the industry publication "Talkers Magazine" named King both the fourth-greatest radio talk show host of all time and the top television talk show host of all time.


title: Larry King

text: In 1994, King received the Scopus Award from the American Friends of Hebrew University. In 1996, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement presented by Awards Council member Art Buchwald.


title: Larry King

text: He was given the Golden Mike Award for Lifetime Achievement in January 2008, by the Radio & Television News Association of Southern California.


title: Larry King

text: King was an honorary member of the Rotary Club of Beverly Hills. He was also a recipient of the President's Award honoring his impact on media from the Los Angeles Press Club in 2006.


title: Larry King

text: King was the first recipient of the Arizona State University Hugh Downs Award for Communication Excellence, presented April 11, 2007, via satellite by Downs himself.


title: Larry King

text: King was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters by Bradley University; for which he said "is really a hoot". King received numerous honorary degrees from George Washington University, the Columbia School of Medicine, Brooklyn College, the New England Institute of Technology, and the Pratt Institute.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: Quantum of Solace is a 2008 spy film and the twenty-second in the "James Bond" series produced by Eon Productions. It is the sequel to "Casino Royale" (2006). Directed by Marc Forster and written by Neil Purvis, Robert Wade, and Paul Haggis, it stars Daniel Craig as Bond, alongside Olga Kurylenko, Mathieu Amalric, Giancarlo Giannini, Jeffrey Wright, and Judi Dench. In the film, Bond teams with Camille Montes (Kurylenko) to stop Dominic Greene (Amalric) from staging a "coup d'état" in Bolivia to access the country's natural reserves.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: A second Bond film starring Craig was planned before production began on "Casino Royale" in October 2005. In July 2006, Roger Michell was announced to direct with a planned release for May 2008, but he left the project that October after there were delays with the screenplay. Purvis, Wade, and Haggis completed the screenplay by June 2007, after which, Forster was announced as Michell's replacement. Craig and Forster also contributed uncredited rewrites to the film's screenplay. Principal photography began in August 2007 and lasted until May 2008, with filming locations including Mexico, Panama, Chile, Italy, Austria, and Wales, while interior sets were built and filmed at Pinewood Studios. The film's title is borrowed from a 1959 short story by Fleming. In contrast to its predecessor, "Quantum of Solace" is notable for citing inspiration from early Bond film sets designed by Ken Adam, while it features a departure from tropes associated with Bond villains.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: "Quantum of Solace" premiered at the Odeon Leicester Square on 29 October 2008, and was theatrically released first in the United Kingdom two days later and in the United States on 14 November. The film received generally mixed reviews, with praise for Craig's performance and the action sequences but was deemed inferior to its predecessor. It grossed $589 million worldwide, becoming the seventh highest-grossing film of 2008 and the fourth-highest-grossing "James Bond" film, unadjusted for inflation. The next film in the series, "Skyfall", was released in 2012.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: Immediately following the events of "Casino Royale", James Bond is driving from Lake Garda to Siena, Italy, with the captured Mr. White in the trunk of his Aston Martin DBS V12. After evading pursuers, Bond delivers White to M, who interrogates White regarding the mysterious organisation Quantum. When White responds that their operatives are everywhere, M's bodyguard Craig Mitchell suddenly shoots one of the guards and attacks M. Bond chases Mitchell and eventually kills him; White escapes in the confusion. Searching Mitchell's flat in London, Bond and M discover Mitchell had a contact in Haiti named Edmund Slate. Bond learns Slate is a hitman sent to kill Camille Montes at the behest of her lover, environmentalist entrepreneur Dominic Greene. Observing her subsequent meeting with Greene, Bond learns Greene is helping exiled Bolivian General Medrano, who murdered Camille's family, to overthrow the government and become the new president, in exchange for a seemingly barren piece of desert.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: After foiling Camille's assassination attempt on Medrano by "rescuing" her, Bond follows Greene to a performance of "Tosca" in Bregenz, Austria. Meanwhile, the head of the CIA's South American section, Gregg Beam, along with agent Felix Leiter, strike a noninterference deal with Greene for access to putative stocks of Bolivian oil, which the CIA believes to be the reason for Greene's interest in the land. Bond infiltrates Quantum's meeting at the opera, identifying members of Quantum's executive board, and a gunfight ensues. A Special Branch bodyguard working for Quantum member Guy Haines, an advisor to the British PM, is thrown off a roof by Bond after refusing to answer his questions. He lands on Greene's car and is shot dead by one of his men. Assuming Bond killed the bodyguard, M orders him back to MI6 for debriefing. When he disobeys, she revokes his passports and credit cards. Bond heads to Talamone and convinces his old ally René Mathis to accompany him to Bolivia. They are greeted by Fields, a consular employee who demands Bond return to the UK immediately. Bond seduces her, and they attend a fundraising party Greene holds that night. At the party, Bond again rescues Camille from Greene and they leave. The Bolivian police pull Bond and Camille over but discover Mathis unconscious in the car's boot. One of the policemen shoots Mathis before Bond kills both of them. Mathis dies in Bond's arms, urging him to forgive Vesper and himself.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: The following day, Bond and Camille survey Quantum's intended land acquisition by air; their plane is damaged by a Bolivian fighter plane. They trick the plane into destroying itself, skydive into a sinkhole and discover that Quantum has been secretly damming Bolivia's supply of fresh water to create a monopoly. Back in La Paz, Bond meets M and learns Quantum killed Fields by drowning her in crude oil. Bond meets Leiter, who discloses Greene and Medrano will meet at a hotel, "La Perla de las Dunas", in the Atacama Desert to finalize their agreement, and warns him to escape as the CIA's Special Activities Division arrives.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: Bond and Camille infiltrate the hotel, where Greene blackmails Medrano into signing a contract that will make Medrano the leader of Bolivia in exchange for the land rights, making Greene Bolivia's sole water provider at significantly higher rates. Bond kills the police chief for betraying Mathis, and after killing the security detail, he confronts Greene. Meanwhile, Camille kills Medrano, avenging the rapes and murders of her family. The struggle leaves the hotel destroyed by fire. Bond captures Greene and interrogates him about Quantum. Bond leaves him stranded in the desert with only a can of engine oil. Bond and Camille share a kiss, and she wishes him luck in conquering his demons.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: Bond travels to Kazan, Russia, where he finds Vesper Lynd's former lover, Yusef Kabira, a member of Quantum who seduces female agents with valuable connections and is indirectly responsible for her death. After saving Kabira's latest target, Corrine, who works in Canadian intelligence, Bond allows MI6 to arrest Kabira, unharmed. Outside, M tells Bond that Greene was found dead in the middle of the desert, shot twice in the head and some engine oil found in his stomach. Bond admits that M was right about Vesper. M tells Bond she needs him back; he responds that he never left. As he walks away, Bond drops Vesper's necklace behind him in the snow.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: Marc Forster asked his friends and fellow directors Guillermo del Toro and Alfonso Cuarón to appear in cameos. Cuarón appears as a Bolivian helicopter pilot, while del Toro provides several other voices.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: In October 2005, before the beginning of production of "Casino Royale", Michael G. Wilson announced that Neal Purvis and Robert Wade were working on a screenplay for the next film. They deliberately wrote "Casino Royale" to tie in to the next film so they could exploit Bond's emotions following Vesper's death in the previous film. Purvis and Wade's first storyline followed Bond releasing Mr. White in Siena so that he could follow him and find his employers. Bond would later infiltrate the mysterious organisation, which is being led by the villain, Dante, who is aligned with Yusuf Kabira, Vesper's boyfriend. In July 2006, as "Casino Royale" entered post-production, Eon Productions announced Roger Michell, who directed Craig in "Enduring Love" and "The Mother", had entered negotiations to direct, and the next film would be based on an original idea by Wilson. The film was confirmed for a 2 May 2008 release date, with Craig reprising the lead role. Months later, in October 2006, Michell stepped down as director citing the slow progress on the script. Upon Michell's departure, Sony Entertainment vice chairman Jeff Blake admitted a production schedule of 18 months was a very short window, and the release date was pushed back to late 2008. Purvis and Wade completed their draft of the script by April 2007, and Paul Haggis, who polished the "Casino Royale" script, began his rewrite the next month. Work on script was delayed by the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike. Haggis's draft was originally titled "Sleep of the Dead".


title: Quantum of Solace

text: Following Michell's departure, Tony Scott, Jonathan Mostow, Marc Forster, and Alex Proyas were under consideration to replace him. In June 2007, Forster was confirmed as director. He was surprised that he was approached for the job, stating he was not a big Bond film fan, and that he would not have accepted had he not seen "Casino Royale" which he felt had humanised Bond; since travelling the world had become less exotic since the series's advent, it made sense to focus more on Bond as a character. Born in Germany and raised in Switzerland, Forster was the first Bond director not to come from the British Commonwealth of Nations, although he noted that Bond's mother is Swiss, making him somewhat appropriate to handle the British icon. The director collaborated strongly with Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, noting they only blocked two very expensive ideas he had. The director found "Casino Royale"s 144-minute running time too long, and wanted his follow-up to be "tight and fast … like a bullet".


title: Quantum of Solace

text: Haggis, Forster and Wilson rewrote the story. Haggis said he completed his script two hours before the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike officially began. Forster noted a running theme in his films was emotionally repressed protagonists, and the theme of the picture would be Bond learning to trust after feeling betrayed by Vesper. Forster said he created the Camille character as a strong female counterpart to Bond rather than a casual love interest; she openly shows emotions similar to those which Bond experiences but is unable to express. Haggis located his draft's climax in the Swiss Alps, but Forster wanted the action sequences to be based around the four classical elements of earth, water, air and fire. The decision to homage Oddjob's murder of Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton) in "Goldfinger" in Fields's death came about as Forster wanted to show oil had replaced gold as the most precious material. The producers rejected Haggis's idea that Vesper Lynd had a child, because "Bond was an orphan ... Once he finds the kid, Bond can't just leave the kid". The water supply issue in Bolivia was the main theme, with a story based on the Cochabamba Water Revolt.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: Wilson decided on the title "Quantum of Solace" only "a few days" before its announcement on 24 January 2008. It was the name of a short story in Ian Fleming's anthology "For Your Eyes Only" (1960). The film is related to the title in one of its thematic elements: "when the "Quantum of Solace" drops to zero, humanity and consideration of one human for another is gone". Daniel Craig admitted, "I was unsure at first. Bond is looking for his quantum of solace and that's what he wants, he wants his closure. Ian Fleming says that if you don't have a quantum of solace in your relationship then the relationship is over. It's that spark of niceness in a relationship that if you don't have you might as well give up." He said that "Bond doesn't have that because his girlfriend [Vesper Lynd] has been killed", and therefore, "[Bond is] looking for revenge … to make himself happy with the world again". Afterwards, Quantum was made the name of the organisation introduced in "Casino Royale". Craig noted the letter Q itself looks rather odd. Near the end of the film, the Camille Montes character and Bond have a discussion about their individual quests to avenge the deaths of their loved ones. Montes asks Bond to "let me know what it feels like" when he succeeds, the implication of the title being that it will be a small amount of solace compared to his despair. Bond's lack of emotion when he does exact revenge shows this to be the case.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: In a December 2011 interview, Craig stated: "We had the bare bones of a script and then there was a writers' strike and there was nothing we could do. We couldn't employ a writer to finish it. I say to myself, 'Never again', but who knows? There was me trying to rewrite scenes—and a writer I am not". He said that he and Forster "were the ones allowed to do it. The rules were that you couldn't employ anyone as a writer, but the actor and director could work on scenes together. We were stuffed. We got away with it, but only just. It was never meant to be as much of a sequel as it was, but it ended up being a sequel, starting where the last one finished".


title: Quantum of Solace

text: During filming, after the strike ended, Forster liked a spec script by Joshua Zetumer, and hired him to reshape scenes for the later parts of the shoot, with which the director was still unsatisfied. Forster had the actors rehearse their scenes, as he liked to film scenes continually. Zetumer rewrote dialogue depending on the actors' ideas each day.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: "Quantum of Solace" was shot in six countries. Second unit filming began in Italy at the Palio di Siena horse race on 16 August 2007, although at that point Forster was unsure how it would fit into the film. Some scenes were filmed also in Maratea and Craco, two small distinctive towns in Basilicata in southern Italy. Other places used for location shooting were Madrid in August 2007; Baja California, Mexico in early 2008, for shots of the aerial battle; Malcesine, Limone sul Garda and Tremosine in Italy during March, and at Talamone during the end of April. The main unit began on 3 January 2008 at Pinewood Studios. The 007 Stage was used for the fight in the art gallery, and an MI6 safehouse hidden within the city's cisterns, while other stages housed Bond's Bolivian hotel suite, and the MI6 headquarters. Interior and exterior airport scenes were filmed at Farnborough Airfield and the snowy closing scenes were filmed at the Bruneval Barracks in Aldershot.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: Shooting in Panama City began on 7 February 2008 at Howard Air Force Base. The country doubled for Haiti and Bolivia, with the National Institute of Culture of Panama standing in for a hotel in the latter country. A sequence requiring several hundred extras was also shot at nearby Colón. Shooting in Panama was also carried out at Fort Sherman, a former US military base on the Colón coast. Forster was disappointed he could only shoot the boat chase in that harbour, as he had a more spectacular vision for the scene. Officials in the country worked with the locals to "minimise inconvenience" for the cast and crew, and in return hoped the city's exposure in the film would increase tourism. The crew was going to move to Cusco, Peru for ten days of filming on 2 March, but the location was cancelled for budget reasons. Twelve days of filming in Chile began on 24 March at Antofagasta. There was shooting in Cobija, the Paranal Observatory, and other locations in the Atacama Desert. Forster chose the desert and the observatory's ESO Hotel to represent Bond's rigid emotions, and being on the verge of committing a vengeful act as he confronts Greene in the film's climax.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: During filming in Sierra Gorda, Chile, the local mayor, Carlos Lopez, staged a protest because he was angry at the filmmakers' portrayal of the Antofagasta Region as part of Bolivia. He was arrested, detained briefly, and put on trial two days later. Eon dismissed his claim that they needed his permission to film in the area. Michael G. Wilson explained that Bolivia was appropriate to the plot, because of the country's history of water problems, and was surprised the two countries disliked each other a century after the War of the Pacific. In a poll by Chilean daily newspaper "La Segunda", 75 percent of its readers disagreed with Lopez's actions, due to the negative image of Chile they felt it presented, and the controversy's potential to put off productions looking to film in the country in the future.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: From 4–12 April, the main unit shot on Sienese rooftops. Shooting on the real rooftops turned out to be less expensive than building them at Pinewood. The next four weeks were scheduled for filming the car chase at Lake Garda and Carrara. On 14 April, a closing scene featuring Jesper Christensen's Mr. White and Paul Ritter's Guy Haines getting killed by Bond after Bond said his iconic "Bond, James Bond" line was reportedly filmed, but the filmmakers removed it during post-production in case they decided to bring back Mr. White and/or continue the Quantum story arc in future sequels. The scene's deletion later enabled Mr. White's return in "Spectre". On 19 April, an Aston Martin employee driving a DBS to the set crashed into the lake. He survived, and was fined £400 for reckless driving. Another accident occurred on 21 April, and two days later, two stuntmen were seriously injured, with one, Greek stuntman Aris Comninos, having to be put in intensive care. Filming of the scenes was temporarily halted so that Italian police could investigate the causes of the accidents. Stunt co-ordinator Gary Powell said the accidents were a testament to the realism of the action. Rumours of a "curse" spread among tabloid media, something which deeply offended Craig, who disliked that they compared Comninos's accident to something like his minor finger injury later on the shoot (also part of the "curse"). Comninos recovered safely from his injury.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: For the role Craig trained to be less bulky than in "Casino Royale" and told "Men's Fitness" magazine "In fact, I was much fitter for this film compared to "Casino Royale" – I really had to be – and I was running a hell of a lot more in training, just so I could do these scenes, whereas last time I spent far more time pumping heavy weights to bulk up so I could look big."


title: Quantum of Solace

text: Filming took place at the floating opera stage at Bregenz, Austria, from 28 April – 9 May 2008. The sequence in which Bond stalks the villains during a performance of "Tosca" required 1,500 extras. The production used a large model of an eye, which Forster felt fitted in the Bond style, and the opera itself has parallels to the film. A short driving sequence was filmed at the nearby Feldkirch, Vorarlberg. The crew returned to Italy from 13 to 17 May to shoot a (planned) car crash at the marble quarry in Carrara, and a recreation of the Palio di Siena at the Piazza del Campo in Siena. 1,000 extras were hired for a scene where Bond emerges from the "Fonte Gaia". Originally, he would have emerged from the city's cisterns at Siena Cathedral, but this was thought disrespectful. By June the crew returned to Pinewood for four weeks, where new sets (including the interior of the hotel in the climax) were built. The wrap party was held on 21 June.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: Production designer Peter Lamont, a crew member on 18 previous Bond films, retired after "Casino Royale". Forster hired Dennis Gassner in his stead, having admired his work on "The Truman Show" and the films of the Coen brothers. Craig said the film would have "a touch of Ken Adam", while Michael G. Wilson also called Gassner's designs "a postmodern look at modernism". Forster said he felt the early Bond films' design "were ahead of their time", and enjoyed the clashing of an older style with his own because it created a unique look unto itself. Gassner wanted his sets to emphasise Craig's "great angular, textured face and wonderful blue eyes", and totally redesigned the MI6 headquarters because he felt Judi Dench "was a bit tired in the last film, so I thought, let's bring her into a new world".


title: Quantum of Solace

text: Louise Frogley replaced Lindy Hemming as costume designer, though Hemming remained as supervisor. Hemming hired Brioni for Bond's suits since her tenure on the series began with 1995's "GoldenEye", but Lindsay Pugh, another supervisor, explained their suits were "too relaxed". Tom Ford was hired to tailor "sharper" suits for Craig. Pugh said the costumes aimed towards the 1960s feel, especially for Bond and Fields. Prada provided the dresses for both Bond girls. Jasper Conran designed Camille's ginger bandeau, bronze skirt and gold fish necklace, while Chrome Hearts designed gothic jewelry for Amalric's character, which the actor liked enough to keep. Sophie Harley, who created Vesper Lynd's earrings and Algerian loveknot necklace in "Casino Royale", was asked to create another version of the necklace.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: The film returns to the traditional gun barrel opening shot, which was altered into part of the story for "Casino Royale" where it was moved to the beginning of the title sequence. In this film, the gun barrel sequence was moved to the end, which Wilson explained was done for a surprise, and to signify that the conclusion of the story had begun in the previous film. The opening credits were created by MK12. Having worked on Forster's "Stranger than Fiction" and "The Kite Runner", MK12 spontaneously began developing the sequence early on, and had a good idea of its appearance which meant it did not have to be redone when the title singer was changed. MK12 selected various twilight colours to represent Bond's mood and focused on a dot motif based on the gun barrel shot. MK12 also worked on scenes with graphical user interfaces, including the electronic table MI6 uses, and the Port-au-Prince, Haiti title cards.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: "Quantum of Solace" was the last in Ford Motor's three-film deal that began with 2002's "Die Another Day". Although Ford sold over 90% of the Aston Martin company in 2007, the Aston Martin DBS V12 returned for the film's car chase around Lake Garda; Dan Bradley was hired as second unit director because of his work on the second and third "Bourne" films, so the film would continue the gritty action style begun in "Casino Royale". He had intended to use Ford GTs for the opening chase, but it was replaced by the Alfa Romeo 159. After location filming in Italy, further close-ups of Craig, the cars and the truck were shot at Pinewood against a blue screen. Originally, three Alfa Romeos were in the sequence, but Forster felt the scene was too long and re-edited it so there would be two Alfas were chasing Bond. Ten cars were supplied by Aston Martin. Six 'hero' cars, needed for close-ups and promotional work, all survived filming unharmed with four more cars used for special effects and stunts.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: Fourteen cameras were used to film the Palio di Siena footage, which was later edited into the main sequence. Aerial shots using helicopters were banned, and the crew were also forbidden from showing any violence "involving either people or animals." To shoot the foot chase in Siena in April 2008 four camera cranes were built in the town, and a cable camera was also used. Framestore worked on the Siena chase, duplicating the 1,000 extras during principal photography to match shots of the 40,000-strong audience at the real Palio, removing wires that held Craig and the stuntmen in the rooftop segment of the chase, and digital expansion of the floor and skylight in the art gallery Bond and Mitchell fall into. The art gallery fight was intended to be simple, but during filming Craig's stunt double accidentally fell from the construction scaffolding. Forster preferred the idea of Bond hanging from ropes reaching for his gun to kill Mitchell, rather than having both men run out of the building to continue their chase as specified in the script, and the number of effects shots increased.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: To film the aerial dogfight, a "Snakehead" camera was built and placed on the nose and tail of a Piper Aerostar 700. SolidWorks, who provided the software used to design the camera, stated "pilots for the first time can fly as aggressively as they dare without sacrificing the drama of the shot." The camera could turn 360 degrees and was shaped like a periscope. The crew also mounted SpaceCams on helicopters, and placed cameras with 1600mm lenses underground, to cover the action. Forster wanted to film the plane fight as a homage to Alfred Hitchcock's "North by Northwest", and chose planes like the Douglas DC-3 to suit that.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: The free-fall scene involved its own set of challenges; director Marc Forster didn't want to shoot the scene against a green screen. The scene was shot in an air tunnel at Bodyflight, which offers the same effects as skydiving. Daniel Craig and Olga Kurylenko did their own stunts for this scene. While a great solution for the actors' performances, the technique presented enormous VFX challenges: relighting shots captured in a tall white tube to match the sky over the Bolivian desert; and the impossibility of filming medium to wide shots of the actors. An array of eight Dalsa Origin cameras (supported by seven HD cameras and a 35mm hand-held camera, all running in sync) was used to create a virtual camera with which to shoot the actors floating in the simulator. Ged Wright and his team at Double Negative developed a method to use the data from these cameras that allowed these real performances to be placed in a synthetic environment as seen by a synthetic camera.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: During the shooting in the wind tunnel Craig and Kurylenko wore wind-resistant contact lenses that enabled them to open their eyes as they fell. For safety and comfort, they only shot for 30 seconds at a time. Forster wished he had had more time to work on the free-fall scene.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: The Moving Picture Company created the climactic hotel sequence. The fire effects were supervised by Chris Corbould, and post-production MPC had to enhance the sequence by making the smoke look closer to the actors, so it would look more dangerous. A full-scale replica of the building's exterior was used for the exploding part Bond and Camille escape from.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: The boat chase was another scene that required very little CGI. Machine FX worked on replacing a few shots of visible stuntmen with a digital version of Craig's head, and recreated the boats Bond jumps over on his motorcycle to make it look more dangerous. Crowd creation was done for the "Tosca" scene by Machine FX, to make the performance look like it had sold out. Forster edited the opera scene to resemble "The Man Who Knew Too Much". In total, there are 900+ visual effects shots in "Quantum of Solace".


title: Quantum of Solace

text: David Arnold, who composed the scores for the previous four Bond films, returned for "Quantum of Solace". He said that Forster likes to work very closely with his composers and that, in comparison to the accelerated schedule he was tied to on "Casino Royale", the intention was to spend a long time scoring the film to "really work it out." He also said he would be "taking a different approach" with the score. Arnold composed the music based on impressions from reading the script, and Forster edited those into the film. As with "Casino Royale", Arnold kept use of the "James Bond Theme" to a minimum. Arnold collaborated with Kieran Hebden for "Crawl, End Crawl," a remix of the score played during the end credits.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: Jack White of The White Stripes and Alicia Keys collaborated on "Another Way to Die," the first Bond music duet. They had wanted to work together for two years beforehand. The song was recorded in Nashville, Tennessee; White played the drums while Keys performed on the piano. The Memphis Horns also contributed to the track. White's favourite Bond theme is John Barry's instrumental piece for "On Her Majesty's Secret Service", and he watched various opening credit sequences from the series for inspiration while mixing the track. Mark Ronson and Amy Winehouse had recorded a demo track for the film, but Ronson explained Winehouse's well-publicised legal issues in the preceding weeks made her "not ready to record any music" at that time.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: The film premiered at the Odeon Leicester Square on 29 October 2008. Princes William and Harry attended, and proceeds from the screening were donated to the charities Help for Heroes and the Royal British Legion. The film was originally scheduled to be released in the UK and North America on 7 November; however, Eon pushed forward the British date to 31 October during filming, while the American date was pushed back in August to 14 November, after "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" had been moved to 2009, thereby allowing the distributors to market the film over the autumn blockbuster Thanksgiving holiday weekend. In Australia, the film was moved a week to 19 November, after 20th Century Fox chose to release "Australia" on "Quantum of Solace"s original date of 26 November.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: Returning product placement partners from "Casino Royale" included Ford, Heineken, Smirnoff, Omega SA, Virgin Atlantic and Sony Ericsson. A reported £50 million was earned in product placement, which tops the Bond films' record of £44 million for "Die Another Day". The 2009 Ford Ka is driven by Camille in the film. Avon created a fragrance called Bond Girl 007 with Gemma Arterton as the "face" of the product. Coca-Cola became a promotional partner, rebranding Coke Zero as "Coke Zero Zero 7." A tie-in advert featured the orchestral element of "Another Way to Die." In the film, Coca-Cola was briefly seen being served at Dominic Greene's party. Sony held a competition, "Mission for a Million," enabling registered players to use their products to complete certain tasks. Each completed "mission" gave consumers a chance to win $1 million and a trip to a top-secret location.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: Corgi International Limited made 5-inch action figures and gadgets (such as a voice-activated briefcase), as well as its traditional die-cast toy vehicles. It also created 7-inch figures of characters from the previous films. Scalextric released four racing sets to coincide with the film. Activision released its first James Bond game, also titled "Quantum of Solace", which is based on both "Casino Royale" and "Quantum of Solace". It is the first Bond game to feature Craig's likeness and the first seventh-generation console game in the series. Swatch designed a series of wrist watches, each of them inspired by a Bond villain.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: Though the screenplay was not novelised despite its original storyline, Penguin Books published a compilation of Fleming's short stories entitled "Quantum of Solace: The Complete James Bond Short Stories", with a UK release date of 29 May 2008 and a North American release date of 26 August 2008. The book combines the contents of Fleming's two short story collections, "For Your Eyes Only"—including the original "Quantum of Solace" short story—and "Octopussy and The Living Daylights".


title: Quantum of Solace

text: "Quantum of Solace" was released on DVD and Blu-ray by MGM via 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment in Australia, the UK and North America from 18 to 24 March 2009. On the DVD sales chart the film opened at No. 3, grossing $21,894,957 from 1.21m DVD units sold. , 2,643,250 DVD units were sold, generating $44,110,750 in sales revenue. These figures do not include Blu-ray sales or DVD rentals. The DVDs were released in both a standard one-disc set and a deluxe two-disc special edition. There are no audio commentaries or deleted scenes on these editions.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: Upon its opening in the UK, the film grossed £4.9 million ($8 million), breaking the record for the largest Friday opening (31 October 2008) in the UK. The film then broke the UK opening-weekend record, taking £15.5 million ($25 million) in its first weekend, surpassing the previous record of £14.9 million held by "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire". It earned a further £14 million in France and Sweden—where it opened on the same day. The weekend gross of the equivalent of $10.6 million in France was a record for the series, surpassing what "Casino Royale" made in five days by 16%. The $2.7 million gross in Sweden was the fourth-highest opening for a film there.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: The following week, the film was playing in sixty countries. It grossed the equivalent of $39.3 million in the UK, $16.5 million in France and $7.7 million in Germany on 7 November 2008. The film broke records in Switzerland, Finland, United Arab Emirates, Nigeria, Romania and Slovenia. Its Chinese and Indian openings were the second-largest ever for foreign-language films.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: The film grossed $27 million on its opening day in 3,451 cinemas in Canada and the United States, where it was the number one film for the weekend, with $67.5 million and $19,568 average per cinema. It was the highest-grossing opening weekend "Bond" film in the US, and tied with "The Incredibles" for the biggest November opening outside of the "Harry Potter" series. From the British opening on 31 October, through to the US opening weekend on 14 November, the film had grossed a total $319,128,882 worldwide. The film grossed $168.4 million in Canada and the US, and $421.2 million in other territories, for a total of $589.6 million.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The site's critical consensus reads: "Brutal and breathless, "Quantum Of Solace" delivers tender emotions along with frenetic action, but coming on the heels of "Casino Royale", it's still a bit of a disappointment." On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 58 out of 100 based on 48 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Critics generally preferred "Casino Royale", but continued to praise Daniel Craig's depiction of Bond, and agree that the film is still an enjoyable addition to the series. The action sequences and pacing were praised, but criticism grew over the realism and serious but gritty feeling that the film carried over. The film earned an average grade of "B−" from CinemaScore's audience surveys, on an A+ to F scale, the lowest of the Craig's era as Bond.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: Roger Moore, the third actor to play Bond in the films, said that Daniel Craig was a "damn good Bond but the film as a whole, there was a bit too much flash cutting [and] it was just like a commercial of the action. There didn't seem to be any geography and you were wondering what the hell was going on." Kim Newman of "Empire" magazine gave it a 4/5 rating, remarking it was not "bigger and better than "Casino Royale", [which is] perhaps a smart move in that there's still a sense at the finish that Bond's mission has barely begun." However, he expressed nostalgia for the more humorous Bond films. "The Sunday Times" review noted that "following "Casino Royale" was never going to be easy, but the director Marc Forster has brought the brand's successful relaunch crashing back to earth—with a yawn"; the screenplay "is at times incomprehensible" and the casting "is a mess." The review concludes that "Bond has been stripped of his iconic status. He no longer represents anything particularly British, or even modern. In place of glamour, we get a spurious grit; instead of style, we get product placement; in place of fantasy, we get a redundant and silly realism." "The Guardian" gave the film 3 stars, and was particularly fond of Daniel Craig's performance, saying he "made the part his own, every inch the coolly ruthless agent-killer, nursing a broken heart and coldly suppressed rage" and calling the film "a crash-bang Bond, high on action, low on quips, long on location glamour, short on product placement"; it concludes ""Quantum of Solace" isn't as good as "Casino Royale": the smart elegance of Daniel Craig's Bond debut has been toned down in favour of conventional action. But the man himself powers this movie; he carries the film: it's an indefinably difficult task for an actor. Craig measures up."


title: Quantum of Solace

text: "Screen Daily" says, "Notices will focus—rightly—on Craig's magnetism as the steely, sexy, murderous MI6 agent, but two other factors weigh in and freshen up proceedings: Forster's new technical team, led by cinematographer Roberto Schaefer and production designer Dennis Gassner. And the ongoing shift of M, as played by Judi Dench, to front and centre: the Bond girls fade into insignificance as she becomes his moral counterpoint and theirs is the only real relationship on screen." The review continues, "Bond is, as has been previously noted, practically the Martin Scorsese of the BAFTAs: 22 films later, with grosses probably close to the GDP of one of the small nations it depicts, it's still waiting for that Alexander Korda award. The best "Casino Royale" could achieve was a gong for sound. Will this be the year that changes its fortunes?" Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times", who praised the previous film, disliked "Quantum of Solace". He wrote that the plot was mediocre, characters weak, and that Bond lacked his usual personality, despite his praise for Daniel Craig's interpretation of the role. Throughout his review, he emphasised that "James Bond is not an action hero." Kate Muir wrote in "The Times" that "The "Bond" franchise is 50 years old this year, and the scriptless mess of "Quantum of Solace" may be considered its mid-life crisis", before she went on to praise the film's successor "Skyfall" as a "resurrection". Some writers criticised the choice of "Quantum of Solace" as a title. "Yes, it's a bad title," wrote Marni Weisz, the editor of "Famous", a Canadian film publication distributed in cinemas in that country, in an editorial entitled "At least it's not "Octopussy"."


title: Quantum of Solace

text: Not all the reviews were as critical. Tim Robey of "The Daily Telegraph", in a reflective review of the film in 2013, was positive. He praised the film's shorter runtime, claiming that many other "Bond" films run out of steam before the end, and included "Casino Royale" in this category. Describing the film as having a "rock-solid dramatic idea and the intelligence to run with it", he gave the film four stars out of five.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: Daniel Craig retrospectively stated that the 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike negatively impacted on the production and end result of "Quantum of Solace", and in 2011 said "we had to cobble that one together because it was made in the midst of the writers' strike, and it had an effect on the finished product, no doubt." During a 2021 interview on " The Empire Film Podcast" Craig described the film as a "shit-show" and referred to it as one of his least favourite performances as Bond.


title: Quantum of Solace

text: The film was nominated for Best Original Score, Best Original Song, Visual Effects, Film and Sound Editing at the 2008 Satellite Awards, winning Best Song. It was nominated for Best Action Movie at the 2009 Critics' Choice Awards, and at the Empire Awards, which is voted for by the public, it was shortlisted for Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Newcomer, Best Thriller and Best Soundtrack. It was nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Action/Adventure/Thriller Film, while Kurylenko and Dench were both nominated for the Best Supporting Actress award. It was nominated by the Visual Effects Society Awards for "Outstanding Compositing in a Feature Motion Picture."


title: Quantum of Solace

text: Movie critic Gilbert Cruz listed the film's pre-titles sequence as the eighth-greatest car chase in film history.


title: Maid (miniseries)

text: Maid is an American drama limited series created for Netflix by Molly Smith Metzler. The series is inspired by Stephanie Land's memoir "Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive." Its story focuses on a young mother who escapes an abusive relationship, subsequently struggling to provide for her daughter by getting a job cleaning houses. It premiered on Netflix on October 1, 2021.


title: Maid (miniseries)

text: It received critical acclaim, with praise going towards the writing, tone, and performances (particularly Qualley's), and became Netflix's fourth most-watched show of the year. Its accolades include three Primetime Emmy Award nominations, including acting nomination for Qualley, and three Golden Globe nominations, specifically for Best Limited Series, as well as Best Actress in a Miniseries or Television Film (Qualley) and Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries or Television Film (MacDowell). In addition, Qualley was also nominated for a Critics' Choice Television Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award.


title: Maid (miniseries)

text: Alex leaves her abusive boyfriend, moves herself and their toddler daughter into a shelter, and gets a job cleaning houses for Value Maids. The show follows Alex's struggles with raising a young child, dealing with both an abusive ex-boyfriend and her own dysfunctional family, and navigating the red tape of government assistance, all while working as a maid and dreaming of a future as a writer. The story takes place near Seattle with the Alex character frequently commuting via ferry to the fictional Fisher Island.


title: Maid (miniseries)

text: On November 20, 2019, Netflix gave production a series order inspired by "New York Times" best-selling memoir "Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive" by Stephanie Land. The series was created by Molly Smith Metzler who was also an executive producer alongside John Wells, Erin Jontow, Margot Robbie, Tom Ackerley, Brett Hedblom, and Land. Production companies involved with the series consisted of John Wells Productions, LuckyChap Entertainment, and Warner Bros. Television. Directors of the series included Wells, Nzingha Stewart, Lila Neugebauer, Helen Shaver, and Quyen "Q" Tran. The limited series was released on October 1, 2021.


title: Maid (miniseries)

text: In August 2020, Margaret Qualley and Nick Robinson were cast in leading roles. On September 14, 2020, Anika Noni Rose joined the cast in a leading role. In October 2020, Andie MacDowell, Tracy Vilar, and Billy Burke joined the cast in leading roles. On November 25, 2020, Xavi de Guzman joined the cast in a recurring role. Aimee Carrero landed a role as Danielle, who is a fellow survivor of domestic abuse and becomes friends with Alex, Margaret Qualley's character, at the women's shelter.


title: Maid (miniseries)

text: Principal photography for the series began on September 28, 2020, and concluded on April 9, 2021, in Victoria, British Columbia.


title: Maid (miniseries)

text: According to Netflix, "Maid" has been viewed by estimated 67 million households, becoming the streaming service's fourth most-watched show in 2021. In the streaming rankings for the week of October 4 to 10, "Maid" doubled its viewing time from the previous week and climbed to second place behind "Squid Game" with 1.9 billion minutes of viewing time.


title: Maid (miniseries)

text: Specifically, in the Netflix's Top 10 TV English titles ranking, during its debut week, "Maid" placed at number two just two days after its release with 61.08 million hours viewed. The following week, it topped the chart and garnered 166.52 million viewing hours. In its third week, it ranked at number two and generated 129.28 million viewing hours. The series remained in the chart for 13 weeks until December 26, 2021.


title: Maid (miniseries)

text: "Maid" received critical acclaim. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 94% approval rating with an average rating of 8.2/10, based on 49 critic reviews. The website's critics consensus reads, ""Maid" takes great care with its sensitive subject matter to craft a drama that is not always easy to watch, but undeniably powerful, grounded by an outstanding performance by Margaret Qualley." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 82 out of 100 based on 19 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: Maid (miniseries)

text: Kristen Lopez of "IndieWire" gave the series an A and wrote, "We need more stories like this and, hands down, "Maid" deserves all the acclaim it gets." Reviewing the series for "Rolling Stone", Alan Sepinwall gave a rating of four out of five stars and said, "Parts of it are deliberately difficult to get through, yet the show is surprisingly watchable given the nature of the story, and at times even light and charming. Much of this is a credit to Qualley, who delivers a movie-star-level performance."


title: Maid (miniseries)

text: Violence researcher Margunn Bjørnholt wrote that the series has received acclaim for "the way it depicts the violence and for painting a nuanced picture of the violent boyfriend."


title: First Chechen War

text: The First Chechen War, also known as the First Chechen Campaign, or the First Russian-Chechen war, was a war of independence which the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria waged against the Russian Federation from December 1994 to August 1996. The first war was preceded by the Russian Intervention in Ichkeria, in which Russia tried to covertly overthrow the Ichkerian government. After the initial campaign of 1994–1995, culminating in the devastating Battle of Grozny, Russian federal forces attempted to seize control of the mountainous area of Chechnya, but they faced heavy resistance from Chechen guerrillas and raids on the flatlands. Despite Russia's overwhelming advantages in firepower, manpower, weaponry, artillery, combat vehicles, airstrikes and air support, the resulting widespread demoralization of federal forces and the almost universal opposition to the conflict by the Russian public led Boris Yeltsin's government to declare a ceasefire with the Chechens in 1996, and finally, it signed a peace treaty in 1997.


title: First Chechen War

text: The official Russian estimate of Russian military deaths was 5,732, but according to other estimates, the number of Russian military deaths was as high as 14,000. According to various estimates, the number of Chechen military deaths was approximately 3,000, the number of Chechen civilian deaths was between 30,000 and 100,000. Over 200,000 Chechen civilians may have been injured, more than 500,000 people were displaced, and cities and villages were reduced to rubble across the republic.


title: First Chechen War

text: Chechen resistance against Russian imperialism has its origins from 1785 during the time of Sheikh Mansur, the first imam (leader) of the Caucasian peoples. He united various North-Caucasian nations under his command in order to resist the Russian invasions and expansion.


title: First Chechen War

text: Following long local resistance during the 1817–1864 Caucasian War, Imperial Russian forces defeated the Chechens and annexed their lands and deported thousands to the Middle East in the latter part of the 19th century. The Chechens' subsequent attempts at gaining independence after the 1917 fall of the Russian Empire failed, and in 1922 Chechnya became part of Soviet Russia and in December 1922 part of the newly formed Soviet Union (USSR). In 1936, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin established the Checheno-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, within the Russian SFSR.


title: First Chechen War

text: In 1944, on the orders of NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria, more than 500,000 Chechens, the Ingush and several other North Caucasian people were ethnically cleansed and deported to Siberia and to Central Asia. The official pretext was punishment for collaboration with the invading German forces during the 1940–1944 insurgency in Chechnya, despite the fact that many Chechens and Ingush were loyal to the Soviet government and fought against the Nazis and they even received the highest military awards in the Soviet Union (e.g. Khanpasha Nuradilov and Movlid Visaitov). In March 1944, the Soviet authorities abolished the Checheno-Ingush Republic. Eventually, Soviet first secretary Nikita Khrushchev granted the Vainakh (Chechen and Ingush) peoples permission to return to their homeland and he restored their republic in 1957.


title: First Chechen War

text: Russia became an independent state after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. The Russian Federation was widely accepted as the successor state to the USSR, but it lost a significant amount of its military and economic power. Ethnic Russians made up more than 80% of the population of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, but significant ethnic and religious differences posed a threat of political disintegration in some regions. In the Soviet period, some of Russia's approximately 100 nationalities were granted ethnic enclaves that had various formal federal rights attached. Relations of these entities with the federal government and demands for autonomy erupted into a major political issue in the early 1990s. Boris Yeltsin incorporated these demands into his 1990 election campaign by claiming that their resolution was a high priority.


title: First Chechen War

text: There was an urgent need for a law to clearly define the powers of each federal subject. Such a law was passed on 31 March 1992, when Yeltsin and Ruslan Khasbulatov, then chairman of the Russian Supreme Soviet and an ethnic Chechen himself, signed the Federation Treaty bilaterally with 86 out of 88 federal subjects. In almost all cases, demands for greater autonomy or independence were satisfied by concessions of regional autonomy and tax privileges. The treaty outlined three basic types of federal subjects and the powers that were reserved for local and federal government. The only federal subjects that did not sign the treaty were Chechnya and Tatarstan. Eventually, in early 1994, Yeltsin signed a special political accord with Mintimer Shaeymiev, the president of Tatarstan, granting many of its demands for greater autonomy for the republic within Russia; thus, Chechnya remained the only federal subject that did not sign the treaty. Neither Yeltsin nor the Chechen government attempted any serious negotiations and the situation deteriorated into a full-scale conflict.


title: First Chechen War

text: Meanwhile, on 6 September 1991, militants of the All-National Congress of the Chechen People (NCChP) party, created by the former Soviet Air Force general Dzhokhar Dudayev, stormed a session of the Supreme Soviet of the Checheno-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, with the aim of asserting independence. The storming caused the death of the head of Grozny's branch of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Vitaliy Kutsenko, who was defenestrated or fell while trying to escape. This effectively dissolved the government of the Checheno-Ingush Autonomous Republic of the Soviet Union.


title: First Chechen War

text: Elections for the president and parliament of Chechnya were held on 27 October 1991. The day before, the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union published a notice in the local Chechen press that the elections were illegal. With a turnout of 72%, 90.1% voted for Dudayev.


title: First Chechen War

text: Dudayev won overwhelming popular support (as evidenced by the later presidential elections with high turnout and a clear Dudayev victory) to oust the interim administration supported by the central government. He became president and declared independence from the Soviet Union.


title: First Chechen War

text: In November 1991, Yeltsin dispatched Internal Troops to Grozny, but they were forced to withdraw when Dudayev's forces surrounded them at the airport. After Chechnya made its initial declaration of sovereignty, the Checheno-Ingush Autonomous Republic split in two in June 1992 amidst the Ingush armed conflict against another Russian republic, North Ossetia. The newly created Republic of Ingushetia then joined the Russian Federation, while Chechnya declared full independence from Moscow in 1993 as the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (ChRI).


title: First Chechen War

text: From 1991 to 1994, tens of thousands of people of non-Chechen ethnicity left the republic amidst reports of violence and discrimination against the non-Chechen population (mostly Russians, Ukrainians and Armenians). During the undeclared Chechen civil war, factions both sympathetic and opposed to Dzhokhar Dudayev fought for power, sometimes in pitched battles with the use of heavy weapons. In March 1992, the opposition attempted a coup d'état, but their attempt was crushed by force. A month later, Dudayev introduced direct presidential rule, and in June 1993 dissolved the Chechen parliament to avoid a referendum on a vote of non-confidence. In late October 1992, Russian forces dispatched to the zone of the Ossetian-Ingush conflict were ordered to move to the Chechen border; Dudayev, who perceived this as "an act of aggression against the Chechen Republic", declared a state of emergency and threatened general mobilization if the Russian troops did not withdraw from the Chechen border. To prevent the invasion of Chechnya, he did not provoke the Russian troops.


title: First Chechen War

text: After staging another "coup d'état" attempt in December 1993, the opposition organized themselves into the Provisional Council of the Chechen Republic as a potential alternative government for Chechnya, calling on Moscow for assistance. In August 1994, the coalition of the opposition factions based in north Chechnya launched a large-scale armed campaign to remove Dudayev's government.


title: First Chechen War

text: However, the issue of contention was not independence from Russia: even the opposition stated there was no alternative to an international boundary separating Chechnya from Russia. In 1992, Russian newspaper "Moscow News" noted that, just like most of the other seceding republics, other than Tatarstan, ethnic Chechens universally supported the establishment of an independent Chechen state and, in 1995, during the heat of the First Chechen War, Khalid Delmayev, a Dudayev opponent belonging to an Ichkerian liberal coalition, stated that "Chechnya's statehood may be postponed... but cannot be avoided". Opposition to Dudayev mainly stemmed from his domestic policies and personality: he once notoriously claimed that Russia intended to destabilize his nation by "artificially creating earthquakes" in Georgia and Armenia. This did not go off well with most Chechens, who came to view him as a national embarrassment at times (if still a patriot at others), but it did not, by any means, dismantle their determination for independence, as most Western commentators note.


title: First Chechen War

text: Moscow clandestinely supplied opposition forces with financial support, military equipment and mercenaries. Russia also suspended all civilian flights to Grozny while the aviation and border troops set up a military blockade of the republic, and eventually unmarked Russian aircraft began combat operations over Chechnya. The opposition forces, who were joined by Russian troops, launched a clandestine but badly organized assault on Grozny in mid-October 1994, followed by a second, larger attack on 26–27 November 1994. Despite Russian support, both attempts were unsuccessful. Dudayev loyalists succeeded in capturing some 20 Russian Army regulars and about 50 other Russian citizens who were clandestinely hired by the Russian FSK state security organization to fight for the Provisional Council forces. On 29 November, President Boris Yeltsin issued an ultimatum to all warring factions in Chechnya, ordering them to disarm and surrender. When the government in Grozny refused, Yeltsin ordered the Russian army to "restore constitutional order" by force.


title: First Chechen War

text: Beginning on 1 December, Russian forces openly carried out heavy aerial bombardments of Chechnya. On 11 December 1994, five days after Dudayev and Russian Minister of Defense Gen. Pavel Grachev of Russia had agreed to "avoid the further use of force", Russian forces entered the republic in order to "establish constitutional order in Chechnya and to preserve the territorial integrity of Russia." Grachev boasted he could topple Dudayev in a couple of hours with a single airborne regiment, and proclaimed that it will be "a bloodless blitzkrieg, that would not last any longer than 20 December."


title: First Chechen War

text: On 11 December 1994, Russian forces launched a three-pronged ground attack towards Grozny. The main attack was temporarily halted by the deputy commander of the Russian Ground Forces, General , who then resigned in protest, stating that it is "a crime" to "send the army against its own people." Many in the Russian military and government opposed the war as well. Yeltsin's adviser on nationality affairs, , and Russia's Deputy Minister of Defense General Boris Gromov (commander of the Afghan War), also resigned in protest of the invasion ("It will be a bloodbath, another Afghanistan", Gromov said on television), as did General Boris Poliakov. More than 800 professional soldiers and officers refused to take part in the operation; of these, 83 were convicted by military courts and the rest were discharged. Later General Lev Rokhlin also refused to be decorated as a Hero of the Russian Federation for his part in the war.


title: First Chechen War

text: The advance of the northern column was halted by the unexpected Chechen resistance at Dolinskoye and the Russian forces suffered their first serious losses.


title: First Chechen War

text: Units of Chechen fighters inflicted severe losses on the Russian troops. Deeper in Chechnya, a group of 50 Russian paratroopers was captured by the local Chechen militia, after being deployed by helicopters behind enemy lines to capture a Chechen weapons cache. On 29 December, in a rare instance of a Russian outright victory, the Russian airborne forces seized the military airfield next to Grozny and repelled a Chechen counter-attack in the Battle of Khankala; the next objective was the city itself. With the Russians closing in on the capital, the Chechens began to set up defensive fighting positions and grouped their forces in the city.


title: First Chechen War

text: When the Russians besieged the Chechen capital, thousands of civilians died from a week-long series of air raids and artillery bombardments in the heaviest bombing campaign in Europe since the destruction of Dresden. The initial assault on New Year's Eve 1994 ended in a big Russian defeat, resulting in many casualties and at first a nearly complete breakdown of morale in the Russian forces. The disaster claimed the lives of an estimated 1,000 to 2,000 Russian soldiers, mostly barely trained conscripts; the worst losses were inflicted on the 131st 'Maikop' Motor Rifle Brigade, which was destroyed in the fighting near the central railway station. Despite the early Chechen defeat of the New Year's assault and the many further casualties that the Russians had suffered, Grozny was eventually conquered by Russian forces after an urban warfare campaign. After armored assaults failed, the Russian military set out to take the city using air power and artillery. At the same time, the Russian military accused the Chechen fighters of using civilians as human shields by preventing them from leaving the capital as it was bombarded. On 7 January 1995, the Russian Major-General Viktor Vorobyov was killed by mortar fire, becoming the first on a long list of Russian generals to be killed in Chechnya. On 19 January, despite many casualties, Russian forces seized the ruins of the Chechen presidential palace, which had been fought over for more than three weeks as the Chechens abandoned their positions in the ruins of the downtown area. The battle for the southern part of the city continued until the official end on 6 March 1995.


title: First Chechen War

text: By the estimates of Yeltsin's human rights adviser Sergei Kovalev, about 27,000 civilians died in the first five weeks of fighting. The Russian historian and general Dmitri Volkogonov said the Russian military's bombardment of Grozny killed around 35,000 civilians, including 5,000 children and that the vast majority of those killed were ethnic Russians. While military casualties are not known, the Russian side admitted to having 2,000 soldiers killed or missing. The bloodbath of Grozny shocked Russia and the outside world, causing severe criticism of the war. International monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) described the scenes as nothing short of an "unimaginable catastrophe", while former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev called the war a "disgraceful, bloody adventure" and German chancellor Helmut Kohl called it "sheer madness".


title: First Chechen War

text: Following the fall of Grozny, the Russian government slowly and methodically expanded its control over the lowland areas and then into the mountains. In what was dubbed the worst massacre in the war, the OMON and other federal forces killed up to 300 civilians while seizing the border village of Samashki on 7 April (several hundred more were detained and beaten or otherwise tortured). In the southern mountains, the Russians launched an offensive along all the front on 15 April, advancing in large columns of 200–300 vehicles. The ChRI forces defended the city of Argun, moving their military headquarters first to surrounded Shali, then shortly after to the village of Serzhen'-Yurt as they were forced into the mountains and finally to Shamil Basayev's ancestral stronghold of Vedeno. Chechnya's second-largest city of Gudermes was surrendered without a fight but the village of Shatoy was fought for and defended by the men of Ruslan Gelayev. Eventually, the Chechen command withdrew from the area of Vedeno to the Chechen opposition-aligned village of Dargo and from there to Benoy. According to an estimate cited in a United States Army analysis report, between January and June 1995, when the Russian forces conquered most of the republic in the conventional campaign, their losses in Chechnya were approximately 2,800 killed, 10,000 wounded and more than 500 missing or captured. Some Chechen fighters infiltrated occupied areas, hiding in crowds of returning refugees.


title: First Chechen War

text: As the war continued, separatists resorted to mass hostage-takings, attempting to influence the Russian public and leadership. In June 1995, a group led by the maverick field commander Shamil Basayev took more than 1,500 people hostage in southern Russia in the Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis; about 120 Russian civilians died before a ceasefire was signed after negotiations between Basayev and the Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. The raid forced a temporary stop in Russian military operations, giving the Chechens time to regroup and to prepare for the national militant campaign. The full-scale Russian attack led many of Dzhokhar Dudayev's opponents to side with his forces and thousands of volunteers to swell the ranks of mobile militant units. Many others formed local self-defence militia units to defend their settlements in the case of federal offensive action, officially numbering 5,000–6,000 armed men in late 1995. According to a UN report, the Chechen separatist forces included a large number of child soldiers, some as young as 11 years old, and also included females. As the territory controlled by them shrank, the separatists increasingly resorted to classic guerrilla warfare tactics, such as booby traps and mining roads in enemy-held territory. The use of improvised explosive devices was particularly noteworthy; they also exploited a combination of mines and ambushes.


title: First Chechen War

text: In the fall of 1995, Gen. Anatoliy Romanov, the federal commander in Chechnya at the time, was critically injured and paralyzed in a bomb blast in Grozny. Suspicion of responsibility for the attack fell on rogue elements of the Russian military, as the attack destroyed hopes for a permanent ceasefire based on the developing trust between Gen. Romanov and the ChRI Chief of Staff Aslan Maskhadov, a former colonel in the Soviet Army; in August, the two went to southern Chechnya to try to convince the local commanders to release Russian prisoners. In February 1996, federal and pro-Russian Chechen forces in Grozny opened fire on a massive pro-independence peace march of tens of thousands of people, killing a number of demonstrators. The ruins of the presidential palace, the symbol of Chechen independence, were then demolished two days later.


title: First Chechen War

text: On 6 March 1996, 350 Chechen fighters infiltrated Grozny and launched a three-day surprise raid on the city, taking most of it and capturing caches of weapons and ammunition. During the battle, much of the city's Russian forces were destroyed, with most of them surrendering or running away. After a couple columns of Russian relief forces were destroyed on the roads leading into the city, Russian forces gave up on trying to reach the trapped soldiers in the city. Chechen fighters subsequently withdrew from the city on orders from higher command. Also in March, Chechen fighters attacked Samashki. A month later, on 16 April, Chechen forces destroyed a large Russian armored column in an ambush near Shatoy, killing up to 220 soldiers; in another one, near Vedeno, at least 28 Russian troops were killed.


title: First Chechen War

text: As military defeats and growing casualties made the war more and more unpopular in Russia, and as the 1996 presidential elections neared, Yeltsin's government sought a way out of the conflict. Although a Russian guided missile attack assassinated the ChRI President Dzhokhar Dudayev on 21 April 1996, the separatists persisted. Yeltsin even officially declared "victory" in Grozny on 28 May 1996, after a new temporary ceasefire was signed with the ChRI Acting President Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev. While the political leaders were discussing the ceasefire and peace negotiations, military forces continued to conduct combat operations. On 6 August 1996, three days before Yeltsin was to be inaugurated for his second term as Russian president and when most of the Russian Army troops were moved south due to what was planned as their final offensive against remaining mountainous separatist strongholds, the Chechens launched another surprise attack on Grozny.


title: First Chechen War

text: Despite Russian troops in and around Grozny numbering approximately 12,000, more than 1,500 Chechen guerrillas (whose numbers soon swelled) overran the key districts within hours in an operation prepared and led by Aslan Maskhadov (who named it Operation Zero) and Shamil Basayev (who called it Operation Jihad). The separatists then laid siege to the Russian posts and bases and the government compound in the city centre, while a number of Chechens deemed to be Russian collaborators were rounded up, detained and, in some cases, executed. At the same time, Russian troops in the cities of Argun and Gudermes were also surrounded in their garrisons. Several attempts by the armored columns to rescue the units trapped in Grozny were repelled with heavy Russian casualties (the 276th Motorized Regiment of 900 men suffered 50% casualties in a two-day attempt to reach the city centre). Russian military officials said that more than 200 soldiers had been killed and nearly 800 wounded in five days of fighting, and that an unknown number were missing; Chechens put the number of Russian dead at close to 1,000. Thousands of troops were either taken prisoner or surrounded and largely disarmed, their heavy weapons and ammunition commandeered by the separatists.


title: First Chechen War

text: On 19 August, despite the presence of 50,000 to 200,000 Chechen civilians and thousands of federal servicemen in Grozny, the Russian commander Konstantin Pulikovsky gave an ultimatum for Chechen fighters to leave the city within 48 hours, or else it would be leveled in a massive aerial and artillery bombardment. He stated that federal forces would use strategic bombers (not used in Chechnya up to this point) and ballistic missiles. This announcement was followed by chaotic scenes of panic as civilians tried to flee before the army carried out its threat, with parts of the city ablaze and falling shells scattering refugee columns. The bombardment was however soon halted by the ceasefire brokered by General Alexander Lebed, Yeltsin's national security adviser, on 22 August. Gen. Lebed called the ultimatum, issued by General Pulikovsky (replaced by then), a "bad joke".


title: First Chechen War

text: During eight hours of subsequent talks, Lebed and Maskhadov drafted and signed the Khasavyurt Accord on 31 August 1996. It included: technical aspects of demilitarization, the withdrawal of both sides' forces from Grozny, the creation of joint headquarters to preclude looting in the city, the withdrawal of all federal forces from Chechnya by 31 December 1996, and a stipulation that any agreement on the relations between the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and the Russian federal government need not be signed until late 2001.


title: First Chechen War

text: Human rights organizations accused Russian forces of engaging in indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force whenever they encountered resistance, resulting in numerous civilian deaths. (According to Human Rights Watch, Russian artillery and rocket attacks killed at least 267 civilians during the December 1995 separatist raid on Gudermes.) Throughout the span of the first Chechen war, Russian forces have been accused by Human Rights organizations of starting a brutal war with total disregard for humanitarian law, causing tens of thousands of unnecessary civilian casualties among the Chechen population. The main strategy in the Russian war effort had been to use heavy artillery and air strikes leading to numerous indiscriminate attacks on civilians. This has led to Western and Chechen sources calling the Russian strategy deliberate terror bombing on parts of Russia. According to Human Rights Watch, the campaign was "unparalleled in the area since World War II for its scope and destructiveness, followed by months of indiscriminate and targeted fire against civilians". Due to ethnic Chechens in Grozny seeking refuge among their respective "teips" in the surrounding villages of the countryside, a high proportion of initial civilian casualties were inflicted against ethnic Russians who were unable to find viable escape routes. The villages were also attacked from the first weeks of the conflict (Russian cluster bombs, for example, killed at least 55 civilians during the 3 January 1995 Shali cluster bomb attack).


title: First Chechen War

text: Russian soldiers often prevented civilians from evacuating areas of imminent danger and prevented humanitarian organizations from assisting civilians in need. It was widely alleged that Russian troops, especially those belonging to the Internal Troops (MVD), committed numerous and in part systematic acts of torture and summary executions of separatist sympathizers; they were often linked to "zachistka" ("cleansing" raids on town districts and villages suspected of harboring "boyeviki" – the separatist fighters). Humanitarian and aid groups chronicled persistent patterns of Russian soldiers killing, raping and looting civilians at random, often in disregard of their nationality. Separatist fighters took hostages on a massive scale, kidnapped or killed Chechens considered to be collaborators and mistreated civilian captives and federal prisoners of war (especially pilots). Russian federal forces kidnapped hostages for ransom and used human shields for cover during the fighting and movement of troops (for example, a group of surrounded Russian troops took approximately 500 civilian hostages at Grozny's 9th Municipal Hospital).


title: First Chechen War

text: The violations committed by members of the Russian forces were usually tolerated by their superiors and were not punished even when investigated (the story of Vladimir Glebov serving as an example of such policy). Television and newspaper accounts widely reported largely uncensored images of the carnage to the Russian public. The Russian media coverage partially precipitated a loss of public confidence in the government and a steep decline in President Yeltsin's popularity. Chechnya was one of the heaviest burdens on Yeltsin's 1996 presidential election campaign. The protracted war in Chechnya, especially many reports of extreme violence against civilians, ignited fear and contempt of Russia among other ethnic groups in the federation. One of the most notable war crimes committed by the Russian army is the Samashki massacre, in which it is estimated that up to 300 civilians died during the attack. Russian forces conducted an operation of zachistka, house-by-house searches throughout the entire village. Federal soldiers deliberately and arbitrarily attacked civilians and civilian dwellings in Samashki by shooting residents and burning houses with flame-throwers. They wantonly opened fire or threw grenades into basements where residents, mostly women, elderly persons and children, had been hiding. Russian troops intentionally burned many bodies, either by throwing the bodies into burning houses or by setting them on fire. A Chechen surgeon, Khassan Baiev, treated wounded in Samashki immediately after the operation and described the scene in his book:


title: First Chechen War

text: Dozens of charred corpses of women and children lay in the courtyard of the mosque, which had been destroyed. The first thing my eye fell on was the burned body of a baby, lying in fetal position... A wild-eyed woman emerged from a burned-out house holding a dead baby. Trucks with bodies piled in the back rolled through the streets on the way to the cemetery.


title: First Chechen War

text: While treating the wounded, I heard stories of young men – gagged and trussed up – dragged with chains behind personnel carriers. I heard of Russian aviators who threw Chechen prisoners, screaming, out their helicopters. There were rapes, but it was hard to know how many because women were too ashamed to report them. One girl was raped in front of her father. I heard of one case in which the mercenary grabbed a newborn baby, threw it among each other like a ball, then shot it dead in the air.


title: First Chechen War

text: Leaving the village for the hospital in Grozny, I passed a Russian armored personnel carrier with the word SAMASHKI written on its side in bold, black letters. I looked in my rearview mirror and to my horror saw a human skull mounted on the front of the vehicle. The bones were white; someone must have boiled the skull to remove the flesh.


title: First Chechen War

text: Major Vyacheslav Izmailov is said to have rescued at least 174 people from captivity on both sides in the war, was later involved in the tracing of missing persons after the war and in 2021 won the hero's prize at the Stalker Human Rights Film Festival in Moscow.


title: First Chechen War

text: The declaration by Chechnya's Chief Mufti Akhmad Kadyrov that the ChRI was waging a "Jihad" ("struggle") against Russia raised the spectre that Jihadis from other regions and even outside Russia would enter the war.


title: First Chechen War

text: Limited fighting occurred in the neighbouring small Russian republic of Ingushetia, mostly when Russian commanders sent troops over the border in pursuit of Chechen fighters, while as many as 200,000 refugees (from Chechnya and the conflict in North Ossetia) strained Ingushetia's already weak economy. On several occasions, Ingush president Ruslan Aushev protested incursions by Russian soldiers and even threatened to sue the Russian Ministry of Defence for damages inflicted, recalling how the federal forces previously assisted in the expulsion of the Ingush population from North Ossetia. Undisciplined Russian soldiers were also reported to be committing murders, rapes, and looting in Ingushetia (in an incident partially witnessed by visiting Russian Duma deputies, at least nine Ingush civilians and an ethnic Bashkir soldier were murdered by apparently drunk Russian soldiers; earlier, drunken Russian soldiers killed another Russian soldier, five Ingush villagers and even Ingushetia's Health Minister).


title: First Chechen War

text: Much larger and more deadly acts of hostility took place in the Republic of Dagestan. In particular, the border village of Pervomayskoye was completely destroyed by Russian forces in January 1996 in reaction to the large-scale Chechen hostage taking in Kizlyar in Dagestan (in which more than 2,000 hostages were taken), bringing strong criticism from this hitherto loyal republic and escalating domestic dissatisfaction. The Don Cossacks of Southern Russia, originally sympathetic to the Chechen cause, turned hostile as a result of their Russian-esque culture and language, stronger affinity to Moscow than to Grozny, and a history of conflict with indigenous peoples such as the Chechens. The Kuban Cossacks started organizing themselves against the Chechens, including manning paramilitary roadblocks against infiltration of their territories.


title: First Chechen War

text: Meanwhile, the war in Chechnya spawned new forms of resistance to the federal government. Opposition to the conscription of men from minority ethnic groups to fight in Chechnya was widespread among other republics, many of which passed laws and decrees on the subject. For example, the government of Chuvashia passed a decree providing legal protection to soldiers from the republic who refused to participate in the Chechen war and imposed limits on the use of the federal army in ethnic or regional conflicts within Russia. Tatarstan president Mintimer Shaimiev vocally opposed the war and appealed to Yeltsin to stop it and return conscripts, warning the conflict was at risk of expanding across the Caucasus. Some regional and local legislative bodies called for the prohibition on the use of draftees in quelling internal conflicts, while others demanded a total ban on the use of the armed forces in such situations. Russian government officials feared that a move to end the war short of victory would create a cascade of secession attempts by other ethnic minorities.


title: First Chechen War

text: On 16 January 1996, a Turkish passenger ship carrying 200 Russian passengers was taken over by what were mostly Turkish gunmen who were seeking to publicize the Chechen cause. On 6 March, a Cypriot passenger jet was hijacked by Chechen sympathisers while flying toward Germany. Both of these incidents were resolved through negotiations, and the hijackers surrendered without any fatalities being inflicted.


title: First Chechen War

text: According to the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, 3,826 troops were killed, 17,892 troops were wounded, and 1,906 troops are missing in action. According to the "NVO", the authoritative Russian independent military weekly, at least 5,362 Russian soldiers died during the war, 52,000 Russian soldiers were wounded or became diseased and some 3,000 more Russian soldiers were still missing in 2005. However, the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia estimated that the total number of Russian military deaths was 14,000, based on information which it collected from wounded troops and soldiers' relatives (only counting regular troops, i.e. not the "kontraktniki" (contract soldiers, not conscripts) and members of the special service forces). The list which contains the names of the dead soldiers, drawn up by the Human Rights Center "Memorial", contains 4,393 names. In 2009, the official number of Russian troops who fought in the two wars and were still missing in Chechnya and presumed dead was some 700, while about 400 remains of the missing servicemen were said to have been recovered up to that point. The Russian military was notorious for hiding casualties.


title: First Chechen War

text: Estimates of the number of civilians killed range widely from 20,000 to 100,000, with the latter figure commonly referenced by Chechen sources. Most scholars and human rights organizations generally estimate the number of civilian casualties to be 40,000; this figure is attributed to the research and scholarship of Chechnya expert John Dunlop, who estimates that the total number of civilian casualties is at least 35,000. This range is also consistent with post-war publications by the Russian statistics office estimating 30,000 to 40,000 civilians killed. The Moscow-based human rights organization, Memorial, which actively documented human rights abuses throughout the war, estimates the number of civilian casualties to be a slightly higher at 50,000.


title: First Chechen War

text: Russian Interior Minister Anatoly Kulikov claimed that fewer than 20,000 civilians were killed. Médecins Sans Frontières estimated a death toll of 50,000 people out of a population of 1,000,000. Sergey Kovalyov's team could offer their conservative, documented estimate of more than 50,000 civilian deaths. Alexander Lebed asserted that 80,000 to 100,000 had been killed and 240,000 had been injured. The number given by the ChRI authorities was about 100,000 killed.


title: First Chechen War

text: According to claims made by Sergey Govorukhin which were published in the Russian newspaper "Gazeta", approximately 35,000 ethnic Russian civilians were killed by Russian forces which operated in Chechnya, most of them were killed during the bombardment of Grozny.


title: First Chechen War

text: According to various estimates, the number of Chechens who are dead or missing is between 50,000 and 100,000.


title: First Chechen War

text: In the Khasavyurt Accord, both sides agreed to an "all for all" exchange of prisoners to be carried out at the end of the war. However, despite this commitment, many persons remained forcibly detained. A partial analysis of the list of 1,432 reported missing found that, as of 30 October 1996, at least 139 Chechens were still being forcibly detained by the Russian side; it was entirely unclear how many of these men were alive. As of mid-January 1997, the Chechens still held between 700 and 1,000 Russian soldiers and officers as prisoners of war, according to Human Rights Watch. According to Amnesty International that same month, 1,058 Russian soldiers and officers were being detained by Chechen fighters who were willing to release them in exchange for members of Chechen armed groups. American freelance journalist Andrew Shumack has been missing from the Chechen capital, Grozny since July 1995 and is presumed dead.


title: First Chechen War

text: Major Vyacheslav Izmailov, who had rescued at least 174 people from captivity on both sides in the war, was later involved in the search for missing persons. He was honoured as the human rights hero in the Stalker Human Rights Film Festival after he featured in Anna Artemyeva's film "Don’t Shoot at the Bald Man!", which won the jury prize for Best Documentary at the festival in Moscow. He later worked as military correspondent for "Novaya Gazeta", was part of the team of journalists investigating the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya in 2006 He also helped families to find their sons who had gone missing in the Chechen war.


title: First Chechen War

text: The Khasavyurt Accord paved the way for the signing of two further agreements between Russia and Chechnya. In mid-November 1996, Yeltsin and Maskhadov signed an agreement on economic relations and reparations to Chechens who had been affected by the 1994–96 war. In February 1997, Russia also approved an amnesty for Russian soldiers and Chechen separatists alike who committed illegal acts in connection with the War in Chechnya between December 1994 and September 1996.


title: First Chechen War

text: Six months after the Khasavyurt Accord, on 12 May 1997, Chechen-elected president Aslan Maskhadov traveled to Moscow where he and Yeltsin signed a formal treaty "on peace and the principles of Russian-Chechen relations" that Maskhadov predicted would demolish "any basis to create ill-feelings between Moscow and Grozny." Maskhadov's optimism, however, proved misplaced. Little more than two years later, some of Maskhadov's former comrades-in-arms, led by field commanders Shamil Basayev and Ibn al-Khattab, launched an invasion of Dagestan in the summer of 1999 – and soon Russia's forces entered Chechnya again, marking the beginning of the Second Chechen War.


title: First Chechen War

text: From the outset of the First Chechen conflict, Russian authorities struggled to reconcile new international expectations with widespread accusations of Soviet-style heaviness in their execution of the war. For example, Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, who was generally regarded as a Western-leaning liberal, made the following remark when questioned about Russia's conduct during the war; "‘Generally speaking, it is not only our right but our duty not to allow uncontrolled armed formations on our territory. The Foreign Ministry stands on guard over the country's territorial unity. International law says that a country not only can but must use force in such instances ... I say it was the right thing to do ... The way in which it was done is not my business." These attitudes contributed greatly to the growing doubts in the West as to whether Russia was sincere in its stated intentions to implement democratic reforms. The general disdain for Russian behavior in the Western political establishment contrasted heavily with widespread support in the Russian public. Domestic political authorities' arguments emphasizing stability and the restoration of order resonated with the public and quickly became an issue of state identity.


title: First Chechen War

text: On 18 October 2022, Ukraine's parliament condemned the "genocide of the Chechen people" during the First and Second Chechen War.


title: All American (TV series)

text: All American is an American sports drama television series, created by April Blair that premiered on The CW on October 10, 2018. The series is inspired by the life of professional American football player Spencer Paysinger, with Daniel Ezra in the lead role. In January 2020, The CW renewed the series for a third season which premiered on January 18, 2021. In February 2021, the series was renewed for a fourth season which premiered on October 25, 2021. In March 2022, the series was renewed for a fifth season which premiered on October 10, 2022.


title: All American (TV series)

text: "When a rising high school American football player from South L.A. is recruited to play for Beverly Hills High, the wins, losses and struggles of two families from vastly different worlds—Crenshaw and Beverly Hills—begin to collide. Inspired by the life of pro football player Spencer Paysinger."


title: All American (TV series)

text: In September 2017, it was announced that the CW veteran Greg Berlanti had two pilots in development for the network, one of them inspired by the life of NFL football player Spencer Paysinger. It was also revealed that April Blair would write and executive produce the untitled project, with Berlanti and Sarah Schechter executive producing. A pilot for the potential series, then called "Spencer", was ordered in January 2018. The pilot was ordered to series on May 11, 2018. On October 2, 2018, it was reported that Blair had stepped down as showrunner due to "personal reasons" and was subsequently replaced with co-executive producer Nkechi Okoro Carroll, who was also made an executive producer. On October 8, 2018, The CW ordered five additional scripts for the series. On November 8, 2018, it was announced that The CW had ordered an additional three episodes of the series, bringing the first season total up to 16 episodes. On April 24, 2019, it was reported that The CW renewed the series for a second season. The second season premiered on October 7, 2019. On October 8, 2019, The CW ordered three more episodes for the show's second season. On January 7, 2020, the series was renewed for a third season which is set to premiere on January 18, 2021. On February 3, 2021, The CW renewed the series for a fourth season which premiered on October 25, 2021. On March 22, 2022, The CW renewed the series for a fifth season which premiered on October 10, 2022.


title: All American (TV series)

text: On February 22, 2018, Taye Diggs was cast as Billy Baker, followed a week later with Samantha Logan cast as Olivia Baker, his daughter. The rest of the cast was filled out through mid-March with Bre-Z and Greta Onieogou cast on March 15, 2018 as characters Tamia Cooper and Layla Keating, respectively, with Monet Mazur, Michael Evans Behling, and Cody Christian cast the next day, to play Laura Fine-Baker, Olivia's mother; Jordan Baker, Olivia's brother; and Asher, respectively. Karimah Westbrook was cast as Grace James on March 19, 2018 and British actor Daniel Ezra was cast in the lead role of Spencer James on March 21, 2018. On May 31, 2018, Jalyn Hall was promoted to a series regular as Dillon, Spencer's little brother. On October 1, 2020, Chelsea Tavares was promoted to series regular for the third season. On October 4, 2021, Hunter Clowdus was promoted to series regular for the fourth season.


title: All American (TV series)

text: Filming for the series takes place in Los Angeles, California. Filming for the first season began the following July. Filming took place in Thomas Jefferson High School in South Central Los Angeles known as South Crenshaw High School in the series.


title: All American (TV series)

text: On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the first season holds an approval rating of 92%, based on 25 reviews, and an average rating of 6.92/10. The website's critical consensus reads, ""All American"'s ambitious attempts to tackle class struggles and classroom drama largely play thanks to its winning cast—an auspicious start to a promising new series". Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 63 out of 100 based on 15 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: All American (TV series)

text: The second season has a 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 6 reviews, with an average rating of 8.75/10.


title: All American (TV series)

text: In New Zealand, "All American" is aired as a web-only series on TVNZ OnDemand. It released the same episode as the US at 8pm Thursdays (NZDT), 5 hours after it is aired in the US, during season one. Season two was released on the same day as the US at 7pm Tuesdays (NZDT), 4 hours after it is aired in the USA. Season three was released on the same day as the US at 8pm Tuesdays (NZDT), 4 hours after it is aired in the USA.


title: All American (TV series)

text: On December 18, 2020, it was announced that The CW was in early development of a backdoor pilot for a spin-off of Geffri Maya's character Simone Hicks reprising her role from "All American". On February 1, 2021, The CW gave the spin-off a pilot order and titled it as "All American: Homecoming". On March 29, 2021, Peyton Alex Smith, Cory Hardrict, Kelly Jenrette, Sylverser Powell, Netta Walker, and Camille Hyde were cast to star in the pilot. On May 24, 2021, "All American: Homecoming" was picked up to series. The backdoor pilot aired on July 5, 2021 as part of the third season of "All American". The series is scheduled to premiere on February 21, 2022. On December 16, 2021, it was announced that Mitchell Edwards who recurs as Cam Watkins on "All American" is set to reprise his role on this series as a series regular.


title: Neo-Nazism

text: Neo-Nazism comprises the post–World War II militant, social, and political movements that seek to revive and reinstate Nazi ideology. Neo-Nazis employ their ideology to promote hatred and racial supremacy (often white supremacy), attack racial and ethnic minorities (often antisemitism and Islamophobia), and in some cases to create a fascist state.


title: Neo-Nazism

text: Neo-Nazism is a global phenomenon, with organized representation in many countries and international networks. It borrows elements from Nazi doctrine, including antisemitism, ultranationalism, racism, xenophobia, ableism, homophobia, anti-communism, and creating a "Fourth Reich". Holocaust denial is common in neo-Nazi circles.


title: Neo-Nazism

text: Neo-Nazis regularly display Nazi symbols and express admiration for Adolf Hitler and other Nazi leaders. In some European and Latin American countries, laws prohibit the expression of pro-Nazi, racist, antisemitic, or homophobic views. Many Nazi-related symbols are banned in European countries (especially Germany) in an effort to curtail neo-Nazism.


title: Neo-Nazism

text: The term neo-Nazism describes any post-World War II militant, social or political movements seeking to revive the ideology of Nazism in whole or in part.


title: Neo-Nazism

text: The term 'neo-Nazism' can also refer to the ideology of these movements, which may borrow elements from Nazi doctrine, including ultranationalism, anti-communism, racism, ableism, xenophobia, homophobia, antisemitism, up to initiating the Fourth Reich. Holocaust denial is a common feature, as is the incorporation of Nazi symbols and admiration of Adolf Hitler.


title: Neo-Nazism

text: Neo-Nazi writers have posited a spiritual, esoteric doctrine of race, which moves beyond the primarily Darwinian-inspired materialist scientific racism popular mainly in the Anglosphere during the 20th century. Figures influential in the development of neo-Nazi racism, such as Miguel Serrano and Julius Evola (writers who are described by critics of Nazism such as the Southern Poverty Law Center as influential within what it presents as parts of "the bizarre fringes of National Socialism, past and present"), claim that the Hyperborean ancestors of the Aryans were in the distant past, far higher beings than their current state, having suffered from "involution" due to mixing with the "Telluric" peoples; supposed creations of the Demiurge. Within this theory, if the "Aryans" are to return to the Golden Age of the distant past, they need to awaken the memory of the blood. An extraterrestrial origin of the Hyperboreans is often claimed. These theories draw influence from Gnosticism and Tantrism, building on the work of the Ahnenerbe. Within this racist theory, Jews are held up as the antithesis of nobility, purity and beauty.


title: Neo-Nazism

text: Neo-Nazism generally aligns itself with a blood and soil variation of environmentalism, which has themes in common with deep ecology, the organic movement and animal protectionism. This tendency, sometimes called "ecofascism", was represented in the original German Nazism by Richard Walther Darré who was the Reichsminister of Food from 1933 until 1942.