I suddenly felt that I was starting to get used to such sights (which trip to war was this for me? Fifth? Tenth? If I could have imagined such a thing in my youth—I would have rather not become a journalist!).

The bodies of nine militants were collected in the basements of houses in this village, destroyed by aviation, for which a week-long battle had been fought.

"Bastards!" says a local militiaman. "Three of them were hiding in the basement among women and children. Behind their backs. They killed three of mine. And one federal boy. He had one day left until demobilization."

The dead are clearly not locals. One of them is black. Local collaborators of the "Vahhabis" — as Wahhabists are called here — have left the village. Two houses are still engulfed in flames: they were not forgiven.

In Dagestan, I was with my State Duma colleagues, Deputy Chairmen of the Defense Committee Alexey Arbatov and Nikolai Bezborodov, and an advisor to the Minister for Nationalities, Yuri Soldatenkov. Kurban Kubasaev, head of the Dagestan Department of the Ministry of the Russian Federation for Antimonopoly Policy, was very helpful. We visited everywhere we could. Sometimes we were warned: "Don't go any further. There are snipers." Sometimes they carelessly threw out: "If you break through, then you were lucky."

We were lucky: not a single bullet scratched the car.

Many, many others were less fortunate: the Dagestani war claimed new and new hundreds of lives of our guys.

We arrived in Novolaksky district two hours after the paratroopers took another height.

"How many guys died?" I asked the deputy regimental commander.

"Sixteen..."

In the evening, from the TV news, I learned that only two had died...

Another lie.

Just as consistently happened in Chechnya, the main losses were sustained from their own aviation.

"How many people died during the storming of Karamakhi?" we asked Magomed Ismailov, head of the Dagestan RUOP, whose fighters took this village.

"Honestly or otherwise?" he asked us sadly.

"Honestly..."

"Forty percent—from our aviation..."

Everyone says this, including the commander of the Internal Troops group in the North Caucasus, Colonel-General M. I. Lubenets: "We were forced to give up aviation. The guys don't know how to work."

We prayed then,
That, God willing, we would stand.
Death ran wild there
Boundlessly.
And artillery too —
On our own.
Maybe — accident,
Or maybe — aimed.

And another lie: it was officially reported that soldiers and officers would be paid almost eight hundred rubles for each day of fighting. But they receive twenty-two rubles in travel expenses. Just enough for a pack of cigarettes. The militants have many English sniper rifles—we have two for all of Dagestan. Not to mention that long before these events, heavy weaponry was calmly brought into rebellious villages.

But now—about the most important thing.

There was not a single person, from federal troop officers to militiamen, who did not tell us about the strange things in this war.

Firstly, everything that happened had been planned long ago and openly.

In Karamakhi itself, power had belonged to the Wahhabis for several years.

Once, local residents delivered a Wahhabist ideologist in a cage to Makhachkala. And what happened? He was simply released. I saw the notes of students from Wahhabist centers. There wasn't a word about faith, about religion—only about how to blow things up, how to attack army units, how to mine, how to escape pursuit, how to take hostages.

I was told: not far from Gubden village, Wahhabis organized a school for three hundred young students in an abandoned farm. Local authorities did not react at all. Local residents drove them out. The fact that a corridor was given for Basayev's and Khattab's militants to exit is pure truth. And not only theirs.

For Raduyev to go for treatment in Turkey, he was given a green corridor throughout Dagestan. Almost with flashing lights in front. Khattab was on the target list of local OMON officers many times, but an order always came at the last minute: do not shoot! Everyone knew he was constantly in Karamakhi. And what? Nothing!

Nothing!

There's no one in Dagestan who wouldn't name Berezovsky as the main culprit of the war.

But what do you say to the constant questions:

"You there, in Moscow, can't you deal with him?"