I spoke to them about the devastated city, and they told me: "Why don't you write about how they hung eleven soldiers upside down on the building of the Council of Ministers?" I spoke about how an army captain shot four civilians with his rifle, absolutely unrelated to the fact that only six soldiers from his battalion were left alive, and they told me about how much loot they found in Chechen houses from robbed trains.

And I understood their personal truth—each one individually, having endured such things during these days that would not have occurred even in a terrible dream. But I knew that somewhere in another basement of another house, one of my colleagues was listening to stories about tortures inflicted on Chechens by Russian soldiers, about young men who, despite being wounded, remained in formation, about courage and baseness, which always coexist in any war, and, of course, about destroyed houses and humiliation. And about everything, everything that they too had experienced during these days of war.

And, perhaps, my colleague would hear the same thunderous murmur in response to the question: "Maybe enough? Maybe it's time to stop? Maybe, after all, peace?" And after that again—words about the native Chechen home, about the homeland, about freedom.

Perhaps war is a mirror in which a person looks and cannot recognize himself?

Something is wrong with this Russian-Chechen battle. For all the idiocy of wars, they usually contain some logic.

After all, we didn't have time to become hostile peoples—only three years passed, what a short time for history! Even in the identification cards of Chechen police officers, the text is written in Russian, only the seal has a wolf instead of an eagle...

I'm afraid we're not looking in a mirror—we're looking at each other, already having forgotten what we really look like.

From behind some other glass, other people mockingly observe how a trickle of blood has already turned into a full-flowing river.

Weapons. Oil. Gold. Money... Perhaps this chain of words will finally help restore the lost logic of events in Chechnya.

"It was like a dream," a SOBR guy tells me. "Sergei and I were walking, and he suddenly shouted: 'Look, body armor in the snow... Let's get it.' We got closer. Yes, it was body armor, but—on a headless body. And you know, suddenly nothing worked anymore. I felt nothing..." Yes, you get used to it quickly, too quickly... By the second day, I noticed in myself that I barely reacted to gunfire. Military medics told me that the optimal duration for being in combat conditions is two weeks. That's for someone already prepared for war, though... Then apathy sets in, and a person becomes indifferent not only to others' lives but also to their own... I am convinced that most of those who ended up in this war had never had to shoot a person before. Now, it has become normal for them: both to shoot and to talk about how they shot. Here's a typical story I heard: "We were sweeping a block. Detained a man, a Chechen... 'What are you doing, I'm from the opposition...' We let him go, and he had already turned the corner. And then a woman ran up to us: 'He's a militant, why did you let him go?' — 'And what did you do?' I ask. 'Well, we caught up, took him around the corner... And that was it.'" But much more (though, it would seem, how much more?), than death itself, the dirt, probably inevitable in such strange wars, infuriates. A colonel of internal troops recounts: "An army general runs up. Urgently demands vehicles for evacuating refugees. I give them. Then I see a crowd of refugees: 'Why didn't you leave?' They answer: 'We didn't have dollars...' I rush to my APC, catch up with that scoundrel... SOBR officers twisted his arms... A shame..."

I noticed that there were no birds or animals left in the city at all. The only living creature I saw was a kitten living at the dairy factory. The officers named him "Spirit."

"Those damn Kuropatkins..." — my interlocutor found no softer words for our military leaders, suddenly remembering the Russian general whose name became a symbol of defeat in the war that Russia shamefully lost at the turn of the century. "On January sixth, the guys and I gathered — from all units — to tally up ourselves how many had fallen in that senseless offensive." — "And how many?" — "By our estimates, it was about five thousand..." — and, after a pause, he added: "Bastards"...