"— Naturally, Dudayev didn't build all that..."

"— Of course not... It all remained from the Soviet Army... As for us, we perform the functions of special internal troop units. The functions assigned to us at home, we certainly don't perform here. The guys are fighting... Actually fighting."

"— Who exactly is fighting on the other side?"

"— The contingent is very large... There are just Chechens, but also many professionals..."

"— Have you seen mercenaries?"

"— We detained sixteen people, twelve of them Georgians. It's definite that Ukrainians are fighting... Many Balts and, strangely enough, many of our own, Russians... A girl from Leningrad... Fighting here as a sniper... They make money from this, and good money."

"— How do you know?"

"— From prisoner testimonies... They receive a thousand dollars a day... In addition, four hundred dollars for a killed soldier, eight hundred for an officer... They pay three thousand for us... They have a well-developed control system: each such specialist is assigned at least two Chechens who monitor the professionals..."

"— And all these stories about female snipers?.."

"— That's absolutely true... I saw one personally: a biathlon master of sport, seventeen years old... Killed eighteen people... That's what she said during interrogation..."

I cannot confirm or deny this account. But there are quite a few testimonies about mercenaries: in the pocket of one of them, killed in battle, a list was found with names and addresses, including residents of Russia, among them Muscovites. A liaison officer told me he himself heard commands duplicated in Russian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and Polish. My colleague brought the passport of a killed female sniper, a Ukrainian citizen.

Yes, there is much evidence of mercenaries, but no one has seen them alive: they simply don't make it to the rear, and now I don't even want to repeat the numerous stories of how their lives on the front line end.

And here is the opinion of the Deputy Commander of the Internal Troops of the Russian MVD, whom I met in Mozdok, on who the enemy of the federal troops is today:

"Firstly, it's Dudayev's inner circle, who have nothing left to lose: under another government, the Chechens themselves would tear their heads off. The second group of individuals are mercenaries, and finally, the third are those who became our opponents as a result of battles: they go into battle not for Dudayev, but to avenge their fallen relatives."

City, city... I have never seen such cities in my life. And I didn't think I ever would. Broken windows of five-story buildings... It seems, all, all... A house cannot be deader. But suddenly on one entrance, a handwritten sign: "People on the first floor," and next to it, on another house, a Red Cross and another inscription: "People live here..." The door slowly opens, a woman comes out, indifferently watching the APC pass by... An old woman drags a sled with a sack... A crowd near the Red Cross, hoping somehow to escape this hell. I ask, where do you get water? An old man replies: "We collect it in puddles..." Another old man. I ask: "Aren't you afraid of the shooting at all? Don't you even flinch at the sound of gunfire?" — "I'm only afraid of one thing... When they knock on the door." — "Who will knock on the door?" — "The Chechens..." And the heavy howitzers keep pounding, pounding the southern outskirts of Grozny... Three distant fires are visible... How do shells distinguish friend from foe, if today even a person cannot distinguish it?... The sixth blockpost is considered the most dangerous: yesterday three OMON officers were wounded here, thank God, all survived... The blockpost is the ruins of a once sturdy two-story house... Mortar shelling. Everyone but me is already used to this. They sit at a table in the courtyard and drink tea from a tin teapot... A guy with a video camera... I thought he was a colleague. "No, I'm from Krasnodar OMON... For history..." A new shift arrives; it will stay here for a day. An OMON officer from the new shift approaches, recognizes me. "It's strange that you came here, to us..." — "Why?" — "But you are, as I know, a humanist and a democrat..." I couldn't understand what meaning the guy, who a minute later was sitting at a window opening, rifle resting on the brickwork, put into these words...