But we didn't come just to bring back a few. We wanted to free everyone. Both ours. And not ours. Our former ones. Our future ones, if they want to be with Russia again.

"No," Aslan Maskhadov told me, "we won't hand anyone over for free anymore. Enough. We've given too much already. Our conditions are an exchange of everyone for everyone."

"But your militants captured in Pervomaysk are terrorists... According to Russian laws. And not only Russian laws."

"To you, they are terrorists. To me, they are my fighters."

"Tell me," I asked Aslan Maskhadov, "is it true that Raduyev is being brought to trial for the attack on Pervomaysk?"

"We will try Raduyev for what he has committed."

"According to Sharia law?"

"According to the laws of our military tribunal."

Right now, I cannot, and perhaps have no right to, recount our entire conversation. I can only add that, according to Aslan Maskhadov, he himself does not know who took the Orthodox priests hostage, or who took the energy workers.

Maskhadov proposes returning to the situation of July 30th last year. An agreement to exchange everyone for everyone was reached then.

"However," Maskhadov added, "don't repeat your jokes when you slipped Chechen criminals from Saratov under the guise of my fighters. Keep them for yourselves. We have enough of those."

That's probably all I saw and felt during that trip to Chechnya.

Just one more thing: it's impossible to conduct any negotiations when—as if specifically for our meeting—airstrikes on Chechen villages began again.

According to field commander Lecha Yusupov, appointed commandant of Novogroznenskoye village by Dudayev, from February 1st to 3rd, as a result of shelling by federal troops of settlements located near Dudayev's main headquarters, 400 houses were destroyed, and 114 civilians died. This refers to the settlements of Centaroy, Yalkhoy-Mokh, Alleroy. In the last village, 13 houses were destroyed.

This was not reported in any television program.

Sunday. I'm just back from there.

Enough. Enough.

For Russia to win, Russia must lose this war.

Two weeks later, a powerful offensive on Novogroznenskoye began (this, probably, explained the nervousness of our military then). And in the next issue of the newspaper, I wrote a second article after this assignment, perhaps repeating myself in some ways, but rather—to explain once again, with full clarity, what I saw there.

Soldiers died in our arms,
We honestly toiled under fire.
Those behind us – we are to blame for them.
They sold our honor, our souls.

Novogroznenskoye is a village on the Rostov-Baku highway, about twenty kilometers from the border of Chechnya and Dagestan. A village—in Russian terms, a large rural settlement, reminiscent of a district center somewhere in the middle of Russia: several stone buildings, a bustling roadside market, children running in the streets, women standing near shops, dogs indifferently watching people without weapons and people with weapons.

Old, young, teenagers... Novogroznenskoye is a front-line village, but two weeks ago, nothing there hinted at lines of fortifications, long-term underground communications (an image so beloved by our president), just trenches, all that distinguishes peace from war, and the front from the rear.

You turn off the highway—and there you go: you can drink Pepsi-Cola, you can buy a piece of chicken, you can just drive through the village, and if anything surprises you, it's the people in camouflage, some with rifles, which they carry on their shoulders, like rakes or shovels, out of an ingrained habit of rural residents.

And a kilometer before the village and a kilometer after it—trenches, dugouts, APCs, blockposts, mud and stench, all that prevents you from mistaking the front for the rear, and peace for war.

But the peace that existed, or rather, was located between two front-line positions—the village of Novogroznenskoye—lived for all the long months of this difficult and senseless war as if in a completely different dimension, in another universe, in another world.

And that's why I just shrugged in amazement when I heard on the "Vremya" program on Sunday that the military operation in Novogroznenskoye began with the aim of "squeezing out" the militants who had penetrated there.