And then—unknown Chechens in masks and—a path into the unknown, to the jeers of those who set him on that path.

I don't know who spoke to Andrei Babitsky at the filtration point and how, I cannot imagine what Andrei himself felt when he wrote this statement to the Presidential Commission for the Release of Forcibly Detained Military Personnel (this statement was never received by the commission), and Andrei and I never crossed paths in either peaceful or military assignments.

But of one thing I am certain: Andrei Babitsky sincerely responded to the request to save the captive boys. He is a courageous and honest journalist. After all, he—remember!—was one of the few who made himself a hostage in Budyonnovsk hospital itself, and on the bus that took the terrorists from Budyonnovsk, and Chernomyrdin spoke with Basayev on Andrei Babitsky's phone then. (Zhirinovsky, incidentally, appeared in Budyonnovsk in front of TV cameras, but did not even approach the hospital itself—is that why today he is so readily accepted by the Kremlin as a "patriot"?)

But a normal person does not act otherwise. A normal person is a rescuer. I remember how, in order to save the boys, Colonel Slava Pilipenko, a combat veteran from that first Chechen war, made himself a hostage. I know how many times we prevented our Slava Izmailov from exchanging prisoners for himself. I am convinced that Vitaly Bencharsky, proudly wearing his combat medal, would have signed exactly the same letter. Indeed, most of our officers fighting in Chechnya are exactly the same.

Patriotism is, first and foremost, the readiness to save a citizen of one's country in trouble, and only then—the entire country. The whole country is easier to save...

Such are the matters...

And finally, the last point.

I already said at the beginning that I am not just writing about the fate of my colleague-journalist.

Something else, something completely different, has been tormenting me lately. I would call it a premonition of danger (you know how it is), when you yourself don't understand where, from whom, why, but you recognize its inevitability, cursing yourself for childish superstitions.

And the story with Andrei Babitsky became that detail, that nuance, which made a previously blurred picture, frozen in imagination, almost real.

Oh, we are all in danger!...

At first, I was surprised why I had to explain to even some of my old acquaintances what journalist Babitsky was doing on the Chechen side. What are you talking about? How else to get objective information? Let's remember journalists from the first Chechen war—Lena Masyuk, for example, and her other colleagues, for whom reporting from the other side became a difficult, almost deadly ordeal. After all, if not for the horrific footage shot by Andrei in Chechnya and shown on NTV, with dozens of our soldiers killed, we would have continued to believe official military reports that "two, three, four soldiers" died in battles, insulting both the memory of the dead and the human dignity of the living. (Perhaps Babitsky was avenged for this truth? Such a thought suddenly crossed my mind.)

I cannot understand the logic of Koshman, for example, who reproaches Babitsky for having Chechen accreditations with Basayev's and company's signatures found on him during his detention. But how else was he to gather basic information in that bloody chaos? And how could he even move around on war-torn roads?

He knew Chechen commanders? But I also know many of them. And Koshman knows them too. Rushailo. And Shamanov. One of our prime ministers personally released Chechnya's Vice Prime Minister Atgeriev, who was detained at Vnukovo airport, through whose mediation Andrei hoped to save our captured soldiers (by the way, who suggested the name of this field commander to him, whose participation in the exchange was never later indicated?). What then is Andrei Babitsky to be accused of? In that case, Putin could be accused of friendship with the dubious Sobchak, and Voloshin—of almost paternal attachment to the no less dubious Roman Abramovich.

Similarly, I cannot understand why the fact that Russian citizen Babitsky works for Radio Svoboda became a point of accusation against him. As if he had collaborated with the Gestapo, no less. Just recently, not a single Russian politician refused to give an interview to this "enemy" radio station, and just the other day, one of the new prominent deputies told me that he learns what is really happening behind the Duma's scenes from "Svoboda," having despaired of breaking through the political bias of our clan-based TV companies.