Yuri Shchekochikhin

Forgotten Chechnya: Pages from Wartime Notebooks

Instead of a Foreword

Yuri Shchekochikhin decided to publish his Chechen chronicles. Reports from the war, from secret negotiations, closed hearings in the State Duma. Shchekochikhin notes that a journalist cannot take up arms, because if he dies with a rifle in his hands, he won't be considered a reporter. Yet, he cannot help but intervene in life and war. He organizes operations to free prisoners and helps equip a brigade battered in battle. He negotiates with militants and raises tough questions about peace and war in the State Duma. He is unarmed, yet with his own caliber—the caliber of his personality—he influences life. The main thing is that his private politics contain the concept of shame, now considered unpragmatic. Shame for the country, for the war, for senseless жертвы. For him, all this is not geopolitics, not the state’s plump fists clenching, but human destinies. He physically, painfully feels the time slipping away: soon there may be no one left with whom to even agree on peace in the same language.

For him, the category of victory in this war is impossible: victory is the end of the war. He seems to have answered the main question of today's politics: Is it possible, while engaged in it, to remain a decent person?

He was and remains the bearer of a special, bespoke reputation. Which means—he is free.

D. Muratov, Editor-in-Chief of "Novaya Gazeta"

Prologue

We are not accustomed to loneliness,
Hint at us between the lines.
Not by name, not by patronymic,
You can just say — brother, pal.
You all wanted to live from youth,
You all wanted to be eternal…
And now ground by war,
But in churches, you became candles.[1 - Here and further, verses by A. A. Chikunov are used with the kind permission of the author, to whom Notebook 9 is dedicated. Full song texts are printed at the end of the book. — Yu. Shch.]

I drove there through an evening Moscow that still knew almost nothing...

"On Proletarsky Prospekt, where I had to turn onto Melnikov Street..."—that's how I began my notebook entry early in the morning, having just returned FROM THERE.

Yes, the sky over Moscow was already beginning to lighten. A new day was dawning, a day we hadn't had yet. 2002, October.

I almost mechanically wrote down what I had learned and seen, and suddenly realized that these notes of mine, which I had been keeping since January 1995, would not be finished for a long, long, long time.

Before, it seemed like: oh, the end of '96! One can already write a book about how IT was. But IT never ended. Not in '96, nor in '99, nor in 2002, nor now.

And then I decided: it's time to tell the story.

I chose eight events, one (rarely two) per year, that I particularly remembered. Naturally, the accounts of them are entirely subjective. Someone will certainly start arguing with me, someone will accuse me of all terrible sins, someone will be completely against me.

Please. I repeat, I chose those events that I considered watershed moments for myself in this endless nightmare.

And one more thing.

Everyone who was THERE has their own memories. I won't say that these memories bring you terrible pleasure. After all, you don't want to recall partings with loved ones, quarrels with friends, or your own mistakes that led to irreparable consequences. And what you failed to write. It's painful, which is why you don't want to.

You want to remember the courtyards of your childhood, which grew smaller, smaller, smaller, because you yourself grew up.

Some sea. Most likely - the Black Sea. Koktebel. Seventeen years old. That's when I first saw the sea in my life.

And suddenly - war. Chechnya.

In my wildest dreams, I couldn't have imagined myself sitting in an APC, gunfire erupting, corpses on the roadside... Oh my God!

I understand that I am not the main witness.

But I was THERE. I saw.

There's a strange thing about the journalistic craft.

At least, as I've observed it from my own experience: you have to write about events you've witnessed instantly.

And suddenly - war. Chechnya.

In my wildest dreams, I couldn't have imagined myself sitting in an APC, gunfire erupting, corpses on the roadside... Oh my God!

I understand that I am not the main witness.

But I was THERE. I saw.

There's a strange thing about the journalistic craft.

At least, as I've observed it from my own experience: you have to write about events you've witnessed instantly.

At night, if you returned from a business trip in the evening. In the daytime, if you returned in the morning, in the evening, if you returned in the afternoon.

No event you try to describe, if you consider it worthy of public concern, can be allowed to sit in your mind. Then it loses the intonation of the event.

That's why the articles from Chechnya, which I first published in "Literaturnaya Gazeta" and then, after leaving there, in "Novaya Gazeta," were written on the fly, for the current issue.

I don't want to change anything in the text now, although, of course, my understanding of this monstrous tragedy of Russia and Chechnya changed from one trip to the next. It would be dishonest to correct them now. I will only allow myself to tell what accompanied these trips and what I couldn't write about then.

Each time I returned FROM THERE, I tried to understand: did anything strike you this time? Did you gasp at something new you saw and learned? Did you feel yourself standing again at the edge of an abyss, whose depths you couldn't make out, no matter how hard you tried?

Notebook One

Year 1995

The wild Cherkesses are intimidated: their ancient audacity vanishes. The roads become safer by the hour, numerous convoys – superfluous… I rode in sight of the hostile fields of free mountain peoples. Around us rode 60 Cossacks, behind us trailed a loaded cannon with a lit fuse… You understand how this shadow of danger pleases the dreaming imagination…

Alexander Pushkin to his brother Lev,
September 24, 1820

Authorities, Stop Lying!

From Grozny—from that hell of death, dirt, blood, fear, from that city (or rather, from what used to be a city), where political vileness and human courage were so intertwined, the provincial Mozdok seems like a shining Paris: light is just light, water is just water, silence is just silence...

So, authorities, if only you had heard how people, finding themselves in the Mozdok paradise after the Grozny hell, cursed your latest statements on the "Vremya" program about the "second phase of the operation" which supposedly had already begun, about the "replacement of army units with MVD units," and about the "transfer of power to the opposition."

Before leaving Mozdok, I coincidentally ran into some guys from the Yaroslavl OMON: after fighting their battle here, they returned to transport the body of a killed comrade back home. They asked how long it had been since I was in Grozny. I answered: just now. "So, how is it there now?" they asked me. I told them what I had witnessed. "Understood," one of the guys sighed grimly. "And we barely got our rifles... They kept telling us that it was terribly quiet in Grozny now: 'pistols will do'..."

And I won't forget how, in Grozny itself, I heard from a captain, as unshaven as everyone else there: "Some newspaper fell into my hands... I read that children in Grozny went to school..." And, after a pause, he threw out angrily: "Bastards... I'll never read your newspapers again..."

War in Grozny... A real war...

Day and night heavy artillery shells city districts controlled by Dudayev (by various estimates, he controls 40 to 50 percent of the city's territory). But internal troops don't have heavy artillery! There are constant movements of tank columns in the city. But internal troops don't have tanks either! Aircraft launch bombing raids—those are army planes too.

I'm talking about what I saw last week, that is, ten days after Boris Yeltsin publicly declared that "the first phase of the operation is complete" and internal troops had replaced the army...

Here, in Grozny, is a real front line. Here are ours, and nearby, where the next nine-story building stands, are "they"—ours, who by the will of incompetent politicians have become not ours, but strangers, opponents, enemies.

I'm talking about what I saw last week, that is, ten days after Boris Yeltsin publicly declared that "the first phase of the operation is complete" and internal troops had replaced the army...

Here, in Grozny, is a real front line. Here are ours, and nearby, where the next nine-story building stands, are "they"—ours, who by the will of incompetent politicians have become not ours, but strangers, opponents, enemies.

It's already forgotten, as if it never was, that once we ate porridge from the same soldier's mess tin—after all, we all went through the same soldier's school! That we underwent military training together in universities, and even fought crime together—there was a time!—not to mention living together in the same country...

Now—it's over, now it's war, with its own laws, with examples of great courage and boundless vileness, with its scoundrels and heroes, with suddenly awakening mercy and, much more often, with manifestations of inhuman, bestial cruelty.

From both sides. That's why they look at you here, doubting your sanity, if you start telling some about the humanism of the Chechen side towards Russian prisoners, and others about how Russian soldiers share their last can of stew with Chechen children.

Although there is both. But for those fighting today, it no longer matters.

Fog... The helicopter won't fly... They say a column is forming for Grozny. With the same meticulousness and precautions as in Pushkin's time. Only instead of Cossacks with cannons, there are APCs with aimed machine guns... The first sign of war is roads broken by tank tracks and mud, mud, mud... We crawl along. It will turn out that the road from Mozdok to Grozny, which is barely a hundred and thirty kilometers, will take seven hours. As if on horseback. Nothing appears to the "dreaming imagination." What you see is enough... A dead cow on the roadside. A calf killed about five meters away. Another fifteen kilometers to Grozny. Later, on the streets of Grozny itself, I will see uncollected corpses: a woman covered with a sack, two young men in civilian clothes... I will hear: "Oh, come on! You can't compare it to what was here ten days ago..." Then I will stop being surprised.

The center of Grozny is controlled by criminal police, OMON detachments gathered from all over the country, officers and soldiers of the internal troops, and the guard of the Main Directorate for Combating Organized Crime of the MVD—SOBR units—special rapid response detachments.

The grass fell under the tracks,
Engines sang.
Armor burned like firewood,
We didn't burn.

Created three years ago, they were intended primarily — and solely! — to combat armed criminal groups that had occupied our cities. "We didn't know what we were going there for, but it turned out to be straight into battle, into positions," one of the SOBR officers tells me. Today, they command legitimate authority, unlike Alpha Group, which, according to numerous eyewitnesses, if it appears in the city at all, it's only to escort another high-ranking official and, as a rule, impressing — and angering — the same SOBR officers with their freshly pressed uniforms. Every army battalion commander dreams of having at least one SOBR officer with him: they are indispensable, if only because half-trained soldiers feel more confident next to them. And young officers too.

What does the control of federal troops over the city actually mean today? What are "quarters cleared of militants"?

The MVD group headquarters is located on the territory of a dairy factory. From here, APCs go on raids, here—practically daily—the wounded are brought, here every morning a crowd of civilians, mostly Russians, gathers at the gates... An operational-investigative group also works at the headquarters, its task not yet very clear even to its own participants... What crimes need to be solved when everything around is one continuous crime?..

"They bring us those suspected of belonging to militants, but proving whether this person is a militant or not is practically impossible," a young man from Moscow's RUOP admitted to me.

"They bring us those suspected of belonging to militants, but proving whether this person is a militant or not is practically impossible," a young man from Moscow's RUOP admitted to me.

No weapons are brought here; it's impossible to prove that a person just fired a shot and, stepping onto the street, turned into a peaceful passerby. The most suspicious are taken to Mozdok. There's a filtration point there, where (at least last Friday) 24 people were held. Recently there were about three hundred—the rest, according to an MVD officer, were recently released. Serious charges have been brought against almost no one yet, and hopes of catching hardened criminals are not really being met—only three such people have been detained today. I think some of the detainees are currently in detention centers in Krasnodar, Stavropol, Rostov, Mineralnye Vody.

No one here seriously thinks about investigations anyway — there's no time for that. Shooting is constant even in the so-called "protected" areas. But if in Dudayev-controlled areas there are active combat operations, here it's guerrilla warfare. Blockposts, which federal troops and the MVD use like markers to delineate their influence in Grozny, suffer particularly.

In the MVD-controlled city center, there are six such posts; each is attacked almost daily. They told me how the "partisans" operate.

"They fired—and moved. If a tank comes, they'll hit the tank. If an APC... By the time our guys jump out in a panic, they've already retreated. How can you fight if you don't see the enemy? They shoot from five-story buildings, from nine-story buildings, from behind any corner—how can you fight?"

"So," I clarify, "all this happens in the 'cleared' areas?"

"They appear... Both day and night... This story was told to me; I wasn't an eyewitness myself... A Zhiguli pulled up to our blockpost... Somewhere near the bridge over the Sunzha. Two riflemen and a grenade launcher operator got out. They missed the first time, hit accurately the second. They fired, got back in the Zhiguli, and drove off."

(I am not naming my interlocutor's name or rank, nor, for that matter, any of the others I spoke with. Not only because most of them work in a combat zone under pseudonyms — many gave their relatives and friends completely different, quieter and safer, addresses for their assignments.)

In "cleared" areas, you can become a target not only for militants but also for your own side — especially due to the lack of coordination between the army and internal troops. Often, an unknown sniper starts firing between two blockposts, one army and one internal troop, a battle breaks out among their own, and you can no longer tell whose bullet wounded or killed you.

We ourselves drove into such a "cleared" spot – right in the center of Grozny, where there wasn't an inch of living space left, and if anything could be restored, it would only be by leasing these ruins to Hollywood... Yes, we drove in and – came under sniper fire. "Turn around!" shouted Yuri, the commander of the combined SOBR detachment, when bullets punctured three tires of our APC. And then he cursed for a long time, remembering the tank crew who pulled out without informing anyone. They pulled out – and a few minutes later, militants appeared. Before my eyes, they shot down the Russian flag that flew over Dudayev's palace (though only an idiot would equate the former party regional committee building with the Reichstag).

There are no peaceful places in Grozny! War is raging, war... A war incomparable even for hardened men from the Internal Troops, whose fate had thrown them from Sumgait to Karabakh, from Ossetia to Osh.

Here's another conversation—with two SOBR officers from the Moscow region, guarding the line in southwestern Grozny (I present it as it remained on the dictaphone tape):

"— We work at a former strategic missile base... There's a very strong fortified center there, equipped with air defense... With a large number of pillboxes, communication trenches... Very modern weapons... Very serious underground communications..."

"— 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?"

"— 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...

Over the mountains
Battles rolled...
Dazed companies,
Dividing this world
Into strangers and our own,
Marched openly
Against machine guns.

Now, perhaps, it's time to explain a paradox.

The people with whom I spent a week in this war are not only not professional soldiers (except, of course, for officers of the internal troops, and even their main heavy weapons are fragile APCs), but also in the least degree responsible for the politicians' mistakes in the Chechen conflict: they were given an order, told "It's necessary," without clearly explaining what awaited them—professional fighters against professional crime. They know how to analyze, search for evidence, conduct raids, and, of course, shoot; some of them—the same SOBR officers—are proficient in various combat techniques. Their enemy is the mafia, which, for all its power, has not yet reached the level of front-line operations.

And here they are. With me, the SOBR officers were overjoyed: for the first time in twenty days, they got beds; before that, they slept wherever they could. Other conditions? No conditions. They will receive money upon return—two salaries. "How much is that?" I ask. One replies: eight hundred thousand, another, older in rank—a million. Another said that everything might be deducted: they were given money for a hotel, but what kind of hotel is there here? How to account for it, if they left their travel money with their families when they left for Chechnya...

Yes, one could say it that way. They were fed up with Chechnya as a criminal zone: counterfeit banknotes (so many found here that one could wallpaper Dudayev's palace with them), terrorists, just plain bandits sought by all of Russia. Not to mention that they, as professionals, were barred from entering Chechnya: it was easier to extract our gangster from France than from here. But, on the other hand, it would never occur to them to raze Moscow's Solntsevo district just because the famous Solntsevo mafia was born there!

Although they are servicemen and accustomed to risk, in principle, they are people of peacetime. And here they became people of war.

They are proud that their wounded hide their injuries so as not to be sent to the rear. They are pleased that professional soldiers recognize their authority. And even that the internal troops (though a different service, still their own MVD) suffered immeasurably fewer losses than the regular army—it's clear that all this gives them the right to feel much more confident than their army neighbors.

No, they don't talk about "Mother" Russia, about "preserving territory," about "national interests" (in general, I noticed that all such words sound louder the quieter the sounds of battle). These men are concerned with more earthly problems: they found a mine right in front of the train, the APC broke down, the snipers are making too much noise...

I repeat, I came to people with whom I have professional interests, and with some, I've been acquainted for a long time.

But weeks, and for some, already a month of war (the amount of days spent here could be judged by how long their beards had grown), transformed them into completely different people, unfamiliar to me.

What peace! What peace negotiations! With whom? With this bandit? After so many of our guys have fallen? — I heard a general murmur against my timid words that it couldn't go on like this indefinitely: a dead end, and beyond it — an abyss...

More than that! They shouted at me, as if I were the only journalist in all of Russia: "Stop spitting on us! Are we the most to blame?... Chechens are people, but who are we? Where were you before with your human rights, when there was a complete genocide of the Russian population in Chechnya? Why weren't you outraged when Russians were forced to sell their homes for a pittance?!"...

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.

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"...

More and more often I heard that word here. That, and even sharper ones... Those that a sheet of paper would not endure...

"They were like zombies," another of my interlocutors said about the boys who hadn't even properly learned to shoot. "Mortar shelling, and they slowly, as if in a movie, laid their rifles on the ground and just as slowly walked away in different directions, as if they didn't hear the whistling of the mines. We could only do one thing — knock them to the ground under some cover..."

Everything here reminds one of that disastrous offensive, but most of all—the eyes of the surviving commanders who lost their men. Even now, it's hard for me to forget that frozen anguish.

My soul went numb
And froze.
That distant winter
In December-January
It's even scary to imagine
What happened.

I managed to meet several participants in that shameful campaign against Grozny.

"The offensive began on December 30th (not the 31st, as reported in newspapers). We advanced in three columns along three roads. First, before even reaching Grozny, on the night of December 30th-31st, we were caught under bombs from our own aircraft. I called General R.: 'You've lost your mind! What are you doing?!' He told me: 'Find and shoot that spotter...' We found the spotter: 'But I'm an army aviation spotter, and you're being bombed by front-line aviation,' we heard in reply..." — this is the testimony of Lieutenant Colonel D.

But those were not the only casualties during the columns' advance on Grozny: due to lack of coordination between the army and internal troops, shooting between their own units constantly erupted.

Tanks entered Grozny as if on parade, with their barrels raised. They moved confidently and calmly, no one fired at them — until they found themselves in the narrow streets of central Grozny. Then a green flare shot up... A grenade launcher operator jumped out in front of the first tank... The first, the last, and the tank in the middle of the column were hit... Then, everything was over, especially since the infantry, which was supposed to accompany the tanks, was three hours late...

But it was precisely during these hours that police General Vorobyov performed a feat remembered by his subordinates: when his first three APCs were hit, he stopped his column, understanding that he was leading it to a senseless death. Cries were heard on the radio: "Forward! This is the first one's order!... This is the paramount one's order!..." He did not go, and it is unknown how his own fate would have turned out had he not died a few days later.

I don't want to evaluate the strategy and tactics of our military leaders who sent thousands of soldiers and officers to their deaths. Although I don't understand why only on February 7th (according to a communications officer) did federal troops receive equipment capable of jamming militant communications. Even less do I understand why not before, but after the capture of Dudayev's palace (the architect who designed the regional party committee building probably never imagined he was building such an aristocratic structure) did it become known about the existence of a twenty-kilometer tunnel under the city center, connecting to the regional committee, through which a column of tanks could easily have passed: Dudayev didn't build it! And I don't know why only now, in January, did it become known that back in 1992, a large-scale exercise was conducted in Grozny, where the potential enemy was Russia—what a worthless performance all our numerous special services put on then.

I repeat, checking and analyzing these facts, known incidentally to too many people, is a matter for specialists.

But one thing is certain: totally unprepared soldiers were thrown into the war, many of whom had participated in live fire exercises only once or twice. The same SOBR officers gave me numerous examples of the complete bewilderment of soldiers and commanders. And, meeting a high-ranking official from the Military Prosecutor's Office in Mozdok, I heard from him how soldiers are now being intimidated so they won't tell how many times they actually "played at war" before being thrown into a real, not toy, war...

But this is only a prelude, cruel, bloody, but at least explicable by the pathological incompetence of our generals. And then the most interesting part begins: then money begins. Huge money for those who have already won this war.

But this is only a prelude, cruel, bloody, but at least explicable by the pathological incompetence of our generals. And then the most interesting part begins: then money begins. Huge money for those who have already won this war.

Even in Moscow, before leaving for Grozny, an Ingush writer I knew asked me: "Doesn't it seem to you that a very strange war is going on in Grozny... After all, the road to the south is completely open, and, as I know, it's precisely along that road that Dudayev receives weapons and ammunition..." I didn't believe it, and upon arriving in Mozdok, I started to clarify if such a thing could really be true. It turned out, yes, it could. Not just one, but two roads connected Dudayev's militias with their bases: you could freely transport whatever you wanted.

But that's not all! Already in Grozny, I learned about radio intercepts of Dudayev's staff: it was about where 100,000 dollars would be deposited as payment for weapons to be parachuted. But it wasn't a Luxembourg plane that crossed Russian airspace, was it?!

And that's not all! According to one high-ranking officer, Dudayev's army is armed with AKSM rifles from 1994, with eight magazines, optical and night sights. These rifles, my interlocutor said, are manufactured in Tula and Izhevsk and have not yet been supplied to either the army or the internal troops.

Some shed blood, others get rich from it.

Yes, in war as in war: vileness and nobility, courage and filth—close, side-by-side. But there's something very wrong about this war, so wrong that I increasingly come to a strange theory: wasn't this whole story with independent Chechnya concocted simply to make it easier, more convenient, safer to amass millions? Not just for those in Grozny, but for those in Moscow too? On oil, on weapons, on gold? Take, for example, the counterfeit avisos that cost Russia two trillion rubles in 1992 prices. They are called "Chechen," but I am sure it was impossible to carry out this operation without Russian, Moscow banking structures. And the people who are now officially involved in this criminal case live—or lived—not in Grozny at all and bear very un-Chechen surnames: Gorshkov, Kostyuchkov... (I name only those that have already been mentioned by us, in "Litgazeta").

Perhaps such a Chechnya and such a Dudayev were necessary for that? How else to explain why he—since he is such an enemy of Russia—has not yet been stripped of his title as a Russian general? Why did he freely travel all over the globe—not on a ballistic missile, but by plane, crossing Russian airspace? Why did the Russian authorities themselves flirt with him from time to time? I would consider this theory pure madness, if I hadn't suddenly found a curious document in Grozny that sheds light on Chechnya's clandestine economic activity in Russia, or... or Russia's in Chechnya.

Judge for yourselves:

CONTRACT

Cultural and Trade Center "Erkheeni" (Republic of Sakha), hereinafter referred to as "supplier," on one side, and the Ministry of Finance and Economy of the Chechen Republic, hereinafter referred to as "buyer," on the other side, have agreed as follows:

1. SUBJECT OF AGREEMENT:

The "supplier" ensures the delivery to the "buyer" of 999 purity gold in ingots in the amount of 5000 (five thousand) kg at a price of 556,000 (five hundred fifty-six thousand) rubles per kilogram for a total amount of 2,780,000,000 (two billion seven hundred eighty million) rubles 00 kopecks.

AGREEMENT SIGNED BY:
On behalf of the supplier:
General Director Krivoshapkin
On behalf of the Ministry of Finance and Economy of the Chechen Republic T. Abubakarov.

As far as I know, this deal took place at one of Azerbaijan's small airfields...

War is a dirty business. Very dirty. Perhaps my interlocutors are right when they told me that the only "surgical" strikes by Russian aviation in Grozny were those on the bank and the Ministry of Finance and Economy. I am no longer surprised by anything. Not even by the fact that the weapons, on which someone is now making colossal money, will be the last operation, after which the very existence of an independent Chechnya will become unnecessary.

War is a dirty business. Very dirty. Perhaps my interlocutors are right when they told me that the only "surgical" strikes by Russian aviation in Grozny were those on the bank and the Ministry of Finance and Economy. I am no longer surprised by anything. Not even by the fact that the weapons, on which someone is now making colossal money, will be the last operation, after which the very existence of an independent Chechnya will become unnecessary.

And blood flows. And the war continues. And people fight who, as always happens in these cases, will gain nothing from victory or defeat, but will live or die merely as extras in this dirty spectacle.

We were stuck in a traffic jam. Tanks on the left, tanks on the right. The air was thick with smoke and soot. The pops of distant shots... A small dark-haired boy ambled along the column of military KamAZ trucks. "Got any porridge?" he shouted to the driver of our vehicle. The Asian-looking driver opened the door and yelled back: "No porridge, no..." The boy moved to the next truck, and then to another, and another, gradually disappearing around the bend.

What have we done to you, boy...

Now, about what I didn't write then.

Firstly, why I ended up in Chechnya.

I use the word "ended up" for the following reasons.

From the late 1980s, the USSR became a proving ground for local wars on its own fringes. Remember: Karabakh, Sumgait, Tbilisi, Baku, Fergana, Ossetia, Abkhazia... You can't even recall all of them anymore – we found ourselves in such a quagmire. These wars demanded their own coverage. Coverage – by those who should cover them: journalists.

None of us, of course, had such experience.

Yes, it's true, there was the Afghan war, but reports from it were specific: you see, but you can't say; you know, but you must remain silent; you can write the truth, but you are forced to spout nonsense about a "limited contingent" and "international duty," the fulfillment of which, judging by the censored newspapers and even more so by censored television, resembled a game of "Zarnitsa" with musical accompaniment by Iosif Kobzon.

I even remember learning about the Sumgait tragedy from an amateur film, which I was invited, with all precautions, to watch in some apartment on the outskirts of Moscow.

Sometimes there were astounding informational breakthroughs, such as with Yuri Rost, who was the first in the world to report on the authorities' new weapon—sapper shovels. (Even then, in his own newspaper, "LG," where he and I worked at the time, the management was afraid to publish his Tbilisi report, and he was forced to give it to Yegor Yakovlev at "Moskovskie Novosti.")

Yes, and then it broke through: Glavlit, that is, censorship, was abolished, editors became bolder—and suddenly, from somewhere, a whole team of war reporters appeared, mostly very young people.

I read their reports from the bloody Soviet proving grounds with interest, but I loved listening to their stories even more. And although they were strikingly similar to one another: they launched an "Igla," hit a minefield, had to pick up a "Kalashnikov" themselves—they exuded a youthful military-romantic fervor, akin to a young Simonov.

But I was over forty then, and by that time I had been working in journalism for more than a quarter of a century.

I considered it inappropriate to prove to myself that I was not afraid of the roar of war. I have a normal attitude toward dangerous adventures, and I've had quite a few in my life, from Vilnius to the White House, not to mention our native bandits and the KGB. And I didn't consider myself a professional in describing military field romances. At the time, they seemed to me (perhaps this was my mistake) too localized, affecting the interests of various national elites settling bloody scores among themselves. Well, okay, they'll sort it out without me.

But with Chechnya, it was different.

I felt that this was both serious and long-term, and that there would be much blood and—much money, both in Moscow and Grozny offices.

Therefore, I carefully followed what was happening there, read, listened, met with eyewitnesses, talked, and sometimes argued with various Russian politicians.

And I wrote in "LG" about what I learned, what I doubted, and what I fundamentally disagreed with.

I haven't found any notes before '95, but most likely they existed: I just never learned to save my articles.

Therefore, I carefully followed what was happening there, read, listened, met with eyewitnesses, talked, and sometimes argued with various Russian politicians.

And I wrote in "LG" about what I learned, what I doubted, and what I fundamentally disagreed with.

I haven't found any notes before '95, but most likely they existed: I just never learned to save my articles.

But here's what I found. An angry and nervous comment on the front page of "Litgazeta": "Will we hear from Boris Yeltsin again: 'Forgive me, your president'?"

It was prompted by two events: Boris Nikolaevich, according to this text, had disappeared somewhere again and then returned again (what a passion our president had for disappearing acts—just like Old Man Hottabych! You'd lose count of how many times it happened—at least that one in January 1995, I can't for the life of me remember).

And the second reason, of course, was Chechnya, from where reports came, each more terrifying than the last, though I didn't suspect then the true scale of the tragedy of the New Year's offensive on Grozny.

Here's what I wrote then:

"The euphoria that unexpectedly gripped some media outlets in the middle of last week personally plunged me into a state of shock.

What new holiday have they invented on our street? Ah, our president, appearing at the presentation of credentials by new ambassadors, looked 'cheerful, confident, and fully in control of the situation'? Ah, he promised to end military actions in Chechnya within a few days (the day 'LG' comes out is Wednesday: well, what's happening now?) Ah, he's back with us! He finally woke up and saw what had been happening during his seclusion, when words about the 'president fully controlling the situation' flew from the uncertain mouths of his aides...

Yes, naturally, politics and morality are incompatible. But not to such an extent!

And I have no strength to believe that from the moment we saw the 'cheerful and in control of the situation' president, one bloody page of the Caucasian war ended and a new, unstained, clean one opened...

Alas, you won't believe it anymore, you won't console yourself, and I'm afraid, you won't forgive.

I'm amused—and how can one not recall the recent Soviet past!—when Oleg Lobov, live on television, justifies the deaths of Grozny civilians by saying that the US during the Gulf War "destroyed three hundred thousand non-military, but civilian Iraqis" (my American friends gasped, wondering what dream our Security Council Secretary conjured this fantastic figure from), or when Andrei Kozyrev, with a thoughtful air, explains to us, people still communistically trusting, that the US also uses its armed forces to resolve its internal conflicts, no worse than we do.

Oh, America! What would we do without it? Where else would our politicians draw examples from then?

But why then do they not recall other examples from the same America?

During the Gulf War (supported then by the entire civilized world, including us, incidentally), I found myself in Washington. And I remember not only the sorrow spread throughout the country—more than a dozen American soldiers died, accidentally hit by their own artillery fire—their photographs on the front pages of newspapers, their biographies, interviews with their parents and friends, but also a storm of indignation across America when a single "surgical" bomb hit a bunker where civilians were sheltering.

Did our hawks forget about this?

Or – closer, very close now...

The fate of two American pilots shot down in Bosnia.

Don't they remember? Weren't they surprised that President Clinton personally dealt with their fates, and all of America anxiously watched whether the President would manage to return one alive from captivity and the body of the other, who died there?

Only two... A drop in the human sea, but everyone understood that if the president didn't notice this drop—he was worthless. A president who doesn't care about a single citizen in trouble, can he count on the trust of his other citizens?

I hear in response: but that's also propaganda, behind which lies a subtle calculation and a play for popularity.

I think we would have understood our president if, at the time when Russian military towns in Grozny were being devastated, when officers of the Russian army were being taken hostage, when, finally, Chechnya refused to hand over its terrorists responsible for plane hijackings, Russia had intervened, carried out a military expedition, spoken the language of force.

Yes, I think we would have understood...

I think we would have understood our president if, at the time when Russian military towns in Grozny were being devastated, when officers of the Russian army were being taken hostage, when, finally, Chechnya refused to hand over its terrorists responsible for plane hijackings, Russia had intervened, carried out a military expedition, spoken the language of force.

Yes, I think we would have understood...

But the discussion then was precisely about a drop in the human sea. And why notice it, if we have already, in a Bolshevik manner, become accustomed to measuring everything in tens, hundreds of thousands, in millions...

Remember, of course you remember, when at the funeral of three young men who died near the White House, Boris Yeltsin said: "Forgive me, your president." What a lump rose in my throat then. But also—pride in my heart: here it is. Finally, a president worthy of his people.

Where is that Yeltsin?

He will say: "Forgive me, your Supreme Commander-in-Chief, for sending untrained boys to their deaths, while elite units, including my guard, which reached forty thousand men, protected me and my entourage..."

He will say: "Forgive me, the leader of the country, for having such an incompetent Minister of Defense, and his failures cannot be justified by the fact that he is a good tennis partner and my neighbor in the new house in Krylatskoye..."

He will say: "Forgive me, the Chairman of the Security Council, for ignoring the opinions of my advisors and experts, and trusting someone I no longer even know..."

He will say: "Forgive me, your elected president, for entrusting the power given to me by you to valets and watchmen?.."

I'm afraid he will remain silent now.

If I'm not mistaken, the newspaper with this, I repeat, nervous and angry commentary came out at the beginning of the week I flew to my first Chechen assignment.

Now, why I flew after all...

Firstly, already in early November '94, events in Chechnya began to unfold so rapidly that a sense of some horror, into which we were all plunged, became clearer and clearer, and that's why Chechnya attracted me, just as in early youth on Kara-Dag I was drawn to look into the abyss.

But there was another completely prosaic reason, which only someone involved in journalism can understand — the current issue. To make it, to make it, not to be late...

I worked then as the investigations editor for "Litgazeta." In our aging and, alas, then fading newspaper, only our department had young journalists. And although the specificity of the department was far from military reporting, I couldn't ask Anatoly Rubinov or Arkady Vaksberg to go under fire, could I?

Kirill B. was the second from the department to volunteer to go—even before "LG," while working at "Komsomolka," he had traveled to many hot spots. Especially since he had the opportunity to go there as either a translator or an escort for some American delegation. That is, at their expense. (And the money of the impoverished "LG" is a special swan song. And that's why joint projects with wealthy Western colleagues often rescued us, when their money and our informational capabilities allowed us—most often on the same day as them—to print sensational materials.)

How worried I was when he flew away! I called Nazran, asked Boris Agapov, the vice-president of Ingushetia, to cover our guy. Although, how can one be covered in a war...

We held an entire newspaper page for his report. Until it became impossible to hold an empty, unfilled page.

But he had already returned home... Without a report.

"You let the editorial board down! You let me down!" I remember shouting into the phone.

And he, in response, uttered words that I still take offense at:

"But you weren't the one who gave me money for this trip!"

"But we're a team..." I weakly retorted.

Yes, and then I needed to rehabilitate my department.

That, perhaps, was another reason for that trip to Chechnya, where, to be honest, I really didn't want to go.

I wouldn't be interested in writing about the retreats of some and the advances of others. Just as bullets fly across the steppes. Or rather, across the mountains. Or — between the mountains.

But one thing did interest me: what could guys from the MVD's main directorate for organized crime and from RUOPs be doing in Chechnya, where a war was raging?

I wouldn't be interested in writing about the retreats of some and the advances of others. Just as bullets fly across the steppes. Or rather, across the mountains. Or — between the mountains.

But one thing did interest me: what could guys from the MVD's main directorate for organized crime and from RUOPs be doing in Chechnya, where a war was raging?

They are not for this business... During a war, only a madman could give an order to fight the mafia. Or do they, in Moscow, in the Kremlin, not understand this? If dozens of military academies and schools couldn't create a team of generals and officers to fight, then perhaps it's better to retrain them as normal police officers, and police officers as soldiers?

That's what I thought then, not yet understanding the essence and nature of this war...

And I called Mikhail Egorov, at that time the First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs and head of the Main Directorate for Organized Crime.

"Mikhail, I need to go to Grozny. Help me get in touch with your guys," I asked him.

"I won't let you go. You could be killed there," he replied.

"You can't let me go or not let me go. Just help me get to them..."

I'm quoting our dialogue almost verbatim.

"Alright, damn it," Egorov replied. "Tell me, when are you flying?"

"Tomorrow morning... To Mineralnye Vody..."

"They'll pick you up and bring you... There, to our people."

Yes, and then it was morning. Or rather, evening and morning...

Yes, one more thing. At the very beginning of January '95, I met Magomed Ugurchiev. At that time, he worked at the Ingush Permanent Representation in Moscow. About two weeks before this assignment, he came to "Litgazeta." During the January assault on Grozny, his two brothers went missing. There, in Grozny, where he and his large family lived even when Grozny was the capital of the Chechen-Ingush Republic, and where they continued to live even when Grozny became the capital of independent Chechnya...

His story was terrifying, and so we immediately printed a tiny note: "People Disappearing":

"In Chechnya, the male population is being taken away. They are mainly seized by representatives of the Ministry of Defense and the Russian MVD, taken to Mozdok, Stavropol, Krasnodar, Mineralnye Vody. There they are held in detention centers. They are demanded to confess that they are Dudayev's militants or Dudayev's spies.

Here are the facts we have.

On January 11, Ibrahim Ugurchiev, executive secretary of the Ingush republican newspaper "Sardalo," was detained upon leaving Grozny. As of today, it is known that he is in a pre-trial detention center.

Another example. Chingiskhan Amirkhanov, an employee of Ingushvodstroy, managed to escape from the Mozdok detention center. Today he is in Ingushetia. All his internal organs were beaten inside the detention center. This information was given to us by Askhab Yandiyev, manager of affairs of the Ingush Council of Ministers.

Another case. On January 5, Ibrahim Ugurchiev's younger brother, Adam Ugurchiev, disappeared."

Yes, I listened to all this, wrote it down, but, honestly, I hadn't yet felt all these misfortunes, which had befallen thousands and thousands of innocent people, in my heart.

Yes, and I flew with Magomed to Mineralnye Vody (flights to all other cities of the North Caucasus had already been canceled). Magomed needed to get to Grozny to find traces of his brothers.

"One brother isn't even from Grozny, he lives in Siberia... He came to visit, and then suddenly... He left the house, they grabbed him... Where is he now, how..."

Listening to Magomed, I was sure then that everything would be all right... The brothers would be found... We'd find them... Not yet suspecting that thousands and thousands of people would disappear into oblivion in Chechnya. Just like Magomed's younger brother, whose traces he cannot find to this day.

Incidentally, then, during the flight, I heard from Magomed Ugurchiev how he envisioned the origins of the entire Russian-Chechen conflict.

Listening to Magomed, I was sure then that everything would be all right... The brothers would be found... We'd find them... Not yet suspecting that thousands and thousands of people would disappear into oblivion in Chechnya. Just like Magomed's younger brother, whose traces he cannot find to this day.

Incidentally, then, during the flight, I heard from Magomed Ugurchiev how he envisioned the origins of the entire Russian-Chechen conflict.

The thing is, he graduated from the Moscow Literary Institute with Yandarbiyev, who later replaced Dzhokhar Dudayev as President of Chechnya. Then they occupied the same room in the Writers' Union of Checheno-Ingushetia for a long time: one was a consultant for Ingush literature, the other for Chechen literature. (In general, I am struck by how many writing people became not chroniclers of tragic events, but people about whom others write: Zviad Gamsakhurdia, my comrade from "Komsomolka" Otakhon Latifi, who became one of the ardent Tajik oppositionists, Movladi Udugov — as he himself once told me — failed the entrance exam to the journalism faculty of Moscow State University, and Shamil Basayev, it turns out, writes songs. Indeed, "how our word will echo.")

And this is what else I heard from him then, on the plane:

"It seemed like everything was done on purpose. Despite all the euphoria of freedom, the situation in the republic was terrible: rampant crime, economic crisis, people without salaries... But as soon as Dudayev's popularity fell, Moscow would come up with something to boost it. Either the Supreme Soviet called for an economic blockade of Chechnya, or Rutskoi demanded the bombing of Grozny. And each time this happened when Dudayev's rating approached zero. And, as a consequence of Moscow's decisions, his popularity immediately surged..."

Later, I was able to convince myself more than once of such a correlation between Moscow's political decisions and events in Chechnya. But honestly, to this day I cannot give myself an answer as to where there was premeditation and where there was a series of absurd coincidences.

But, I suppose, that's always how it is in human history. Let's remember Napoleon's cold, which cost him victory...

Well, then I flew to Mineralnye Vody, approaching, approaching, approaching the alluring and frightening world of war.

What, I remember, surprised me: among my fellow travelers were many people who wanted to get to Grozny via Mineralnye Vody to bring their relatives and friends out of there. I remember a guy from Ukraine, from Kharkov, I think. He was flying for his sister. "And how will you get there?" I asked him. In response, he shrugged: "I can't leave her there."

I understood that it was much easier for me. After Mikhail Egorov's call, I would be met. I would be taken. I would be cared for and protected.

Generally speaking, for all the dangers that occur in our work, these dangers should not be exaggerated, let alone boasted about.

Still, it's easier for a journalist than for an ordinary person without a press card who gets into all sorts of trouble. And that's why, when I'm asked if I'm afraid, if I'm threatened, and if so, how I react, I answer with a prepared phrase: "That question is for a journalism student."

I am actually convinced that our profession is no more dangerous than life itself.

Yes, and the war kept getting closer and closer. Now the landing gear was released... Now toy houses below... Now the runway... Three men in camouflage near the gangway... "Bye, Magomed, I hope your brothers are found..." — "Good luck to you..."

We drove from Mineralnye Vody to Mozdok. The approaching war was only hinted at by the Kalashnikov in the hands of the sergeant sitting in the front seat of the military UAZ.

"So, how is it there?" I asked the officer from the MVD's main organized crime directorate, who had been sent to meet me.

"Nothing good..." he replied and remained practically silent the whole way, answering my questions monosyllabically: "Yes," "No," "I don't know"...

Thus began my first Chechen assignment, the impressions of which I detailed in an article I titled: "For the Motherland? For the Mafia?"

About what was not included in the article.

"Nothing good..." he replied and remained practically silent the whole way, answering my questions monosyllabically: "Yes," "No," "I don't know"...

Thus began my first Chechen assignment, the impressions of which I detailed in an article I titled: "For the Motherland? For the Mafia?"

About what was not included in the article.

The first evening in Mozdok, where the main federal military base was then located. A railway car, serving as the MVD headquarters. Meeting with the head of all police units, Yuri Proshchelygin, head of the West Siberian RUOP.

"Egorov told me not to let you into Grozny. We'll bring whoever needs to be brought here..."

"I'll go anyway..."

"Well, watch out... You know best..." he shrugged.

I remember what surprised me on the first evening.

Firstly, that everyone I met then used pseudonyms.

At night, we drank vodka with General Shirokov. But it turned out that this general was no Shirokov, but actually Anatoly Shkirko, Deputy Commander of the Internal Troops (and later, after the assassination attempt on Romanov, Commander). It turned out that he himself was from Grozny, where his parents had moved after the deportation of Chechens. What twists of fate happen!

Some everyday issues that everyone was concerned about. For example, a SOBR officer came from Grozny to get beds. Later, in Grozny itself, at the dairy factory, I saw what a celebration it was for the SOBR officers when those beds were finally delivered.

I remember the irritation caused by a man from the Main Directorate for Organized Crime (it turned out that about fifteen years ago, when he was still a lieutenant, we had even met), who was the commandant of a passenger carriage standing alone in a field: I spent the first night there and then again after returning from Grozny.

He was the first of those who hadn't been to Grozny himself but considered himself a man of war: he lectured a lot about military operations and commanded the carriage's occupants like a seasoned warrant officer. Later, when I returned from Grozny, he struck me with a question: why hadn't I taken a certificate proving I'd been under fire? "What do I need it for?" I asked, surprised. "What do you mean, what for? For your personal file," he said, surprised by my question.

(Later, I was told about an inspecting colonel from Moscow who received a medal just because he broke a finger while drunk in Mozdok, but for a bottle, he got a certificate stating the finger was broken in battle. "The further from the front, the more heroes there are..." as my friend San Sanych sings.)

I remember how I couldn't fall asleep for a long time on the first night. I stood, smoked, looked at the stars. From time to time, gunshots were heard: drunk soldiers were having fun...

Yes, I also remember the commander of the Tyumen SOBR, who was nervously weeping: that day he had lost half of his men.

I also remember how from time to time Chechens would approach the staff carriage, and then I would be asked to go outside for a smoke: as I understood it, these were police agents, or those whom they were taken for at the time.

As I wrote in the article, due to bad weather, I traveled in a convoy of KamAZ trucks. First in the back, with Yura Proshchelygin. Then, at Yura's suggestion: "Come on, so you can see better!", I moved into the cab of the last KamAZ. Already in the mountains, approaching Grozny, our KamAZ got stuck. The convoy went ahead. I remember how nervous the SOBR officer became. "You're only fit to herd reindeer!" he snapped at the driver-Yakut, who, it turned out, had only been behind the wheel for three months.

I pretended that, in principle, I wasn't afraid of anything, as the SOBR officer nervously scanned the frightening surroundings through his optical sight.

Then we finally started moving and caught up with the column already at the approach to Grozny, where the entire field was dotted with tanks, occasionally firing somewhere over the road.

That was the first time I heard gunshots. It was quite loud.

In Grozny itself, a very funny episode occurred—I was arrested.

"Go on, head to the dairy factory, the headquarters is there. And I'm going to 'Severny'," Yura Proshchelygin told me.

I ran (yes, that's exactly what happened, because there was gunfire all around) to another car — a repair van, in which I drove, unnoticed by the guards, onto the territory of the dairy factory.

In Grozny itself, a very funny episode occurred—I was arrested.

"Go on, head to the dairy factory, the headquarters is there. And I'm going to 'Severny'," Yura Proshchelygin told me.

I ran (yes, that's exactly what happened, because there was gunfire all around) to another car — a repair van, in which I drove, unnoticed by the guards, onto the territory of the dairy factory.

It was dark and muddy.

"What are you doing here? How did you get here?" asked an unshaven man from whom I tried to find out how to get to headquarters.

I stated who I was and where I was from.

"I recognize you," he said angrily. "I'm asking you, how did you get here?"

I began to explain that I came with Proshchelygin, that he had gone to "Severny," and sent me here, that he could be contacted and would explain everything.

"I don't know any Proshchelygin. How did you end up on military base territory? God knows what's going on!" grumbled the unshaven man, who turned out to be the deputy chief of staff.

I was handed over—for identity verification and to see if I was a Dudayev spy—to the custody of a guy from the Moscow RUBOР.

We chatted peacefully to the crackling of logs in the stove (just like in some childhood movie), recalling mutual acquaintances. It was then that he told me he didn't understand why he had been sent there: what kind of criminals could be caught when there was gunfire all around?

About two hours later, everything finally cleared up, and through several flights of stairs down, illuminating the steps with a flashlight, I was led into a deep basement.

Beds in two rows, a long table, a map on the wall...

The ascetic dinner struck me—not a drop of vodka. "Wow," I thought, "these guys are something! That's what war means!"

(How, two months later, I laughed at myself and the situation I found myself in. Colonel Lesha Pokrovsky—the very one who arrested me—came to the editorial office and recounted how they all wished I would finally leave. "The general told us then: 'Just try to drink! He'll write about it!'" Poor guys!)

I was given (a guest, after all) a separate room to sleep in. Legendary Vityaz commander Hero of Russia Lysyuk and three others slept there.

In the middle of the night, the radio crackled: an observer reported that suspicious Zhigulis were circling near the dairy factory.

"Go on... Just be careful..." Lysyuk told his deputy.

He dressed like an astronaut: helmet, body armor, and some other various, incomprehensible SOBR gear.

"If anything happens, tell the SOBR guys to hit him," Lysyuk instructed him.

He returned half an hour later. No one slept until he returned.

In the morning, I met Colonel Yuri Zaitsev, commander of the West Siberian SOBR, and his men.

When I persuaded him to let them take me with them in their APC, they offered me camouflage and a "sphere," that is, a helmet. I refused: no, I'm a civilian. I did, however, put on a bulletproof vest.

Naturally, I also refused to take a rifle: if, God forbid, something happened, a person found killed with a rifle, not a dictaphone, could no longer be considered a journalist. Even posthumously.

Well, and then there was that predicament I wrote about in the article.

When we returned, the guys asked to take a picture together.

I was surprised when, some time later, I received a package of photographs from Novosibirsk. On one, I found a touching inscription:

"To Yuri Shchekochikhin, in remembrance, as a token of appreciation for his contribution to building a rule-of-law state. SOBR West Siberian RUOP."

Generally, I'm glad that life brought me together with the SOBR guys. Probably because life constantly put them in dangerous situations, and life itself constantly showed them its dark and dirty side, they exuded a strength—not ostentatious, loud, and arrogant, but calm, genuine—that binds our fragile existence and instills a sense of reliability.

Generally, I'm glad that life brought me together with the SOBR guys. Probably because life constantly put them in dangerous situations, and life itself constantly showed them its dark and dirty side, they exuded a strength—not ostentatious, loud, and arrogant, but calm, genuine—that binds our fragile existence and instills a sense of reliability.

No, they, of course, were not happy to be in Chechnya. Moreover, together we cursed Moscow politicians and felt sorry for the untrained boys thrown into this bloody mess. But since they found themselves in this war (although I can repeat what I wrote in the newspaper then: it is not the business of SOBR units to participate in combat operations; they—special rapid response detachments—were created to fight bandit groups), they tried to do their work honestly and thoroughly. That's probably why I never heard bad words addressed to them: no one accused them of cowardice, no one contemptuously threw "Marauders" after them, as, for example, OMON officers were called, and they were not noticed in abuses at filtration points.

About a year later, at the height of the State Duma election campaign, I flew to Novosibirsk with Vladimir Lukin to support Yabloko. I called Yuri Zaitsev: "Gather the guys. I'll tell them about our program." When I arrived, the guys I had met in that wartime Grozny January were waiting for me in his cramped commander's room. Vodka on the table, sausage sliced... "Just don't try to campaign to us. We met there..."

There was one more meeting with a familiar SOBR officer, a Muscovite. Quite unexpected and accidentally disrupting what I thought then was an important meeting.

When Vlad Listyev was killed, I started an independent newspaper investigation, openly announcing it on television and providing my editorial phone number.

That, of course, is a separate story, with many thrilling adventures.

But one day I received a call from the MVD, and they said that we were doing a good job, but it could end badly for me ("You'll have trouble, and we'll have another corpse," said the deputy minister), especially since they had spotted either an observer or a sniper in the attic of the building on the opposite side of the street from my office window.

So I started walking with SOBR protection.

Our first meeting with these guys probably deprived us of important information, but on the other hand, it might have protected us from some danger.

Another phone call:

"I want to tell you something important... Very important..."

"Come to the editorial office..."

"That's impossible."

"Come to the editorial office. I'll come out to the street."

"That's impossible."

"Where, when? I'll come."

"At your place. In Peredelkino. At the crossroads near the children's sanatorium," I heard, surprised by my interlocutor's knowledge of where I lived.

We agreed to meet the next day at eleven in the morning.

"You won't go alone," the colonel from GUOP, who was part of the investigative team, warned me. "The guys will cover you..."

I remember the road from the dacha to the crossroads. Who is waiting? What is waiting? Will I get closer to the riddle or get even more confused? Who are these guys who will be covering me? How will I find them? And they me? And anyway, why all this? It's all nonsense...

Something like that, perhaps, flashed through my mind then, as I turned left off my small street and walked along the forest into some unknown. Or maybe nothing like that flashed. I was just going to one of the secret meetings, of which—given the specifics of my journalistic specialization—there had been many in my life. By the way, I was also covered, and I myself covered (it's like normal safety precautions), though usually these were fellow journalists or simply—close friends. Representatives of the state were covering me for the first time in my life, and that in itself was interesting...

Garages, now right, then left again... Here it is, the crossroads... A Volga... Is it the one? Is it him?

The Volga's door swung open... And a guy jumped out, familiar to me from Grozny, back then, in January...

The one I saw in Mozdok when he came for beds for the SOBR officers based at the dairy factory.

"What a meeting!" I exclaimed happily.

We hugged, and I started asking how the guys were? Was everyone alive? Was anyone wounded?

The Volga's door swung open... And a guy jumped out, familiar to me from Grozny, back then, in January...

The one I saw in Mozdok when he came for beds for the SOBR officers based at the dairy factory.

"What a meeting!" I exclaimed happily.

We hugged, and I started asking how the guys were? Was everyone alive? Was anyone wounded?

We stood next to the "Volga," which even a young Dzerzhinsky Pioneer wouldn't have mistaken for an "office" car (antenna on the roof, three more in the car), forgetting all rules of conspiracy.

And directly towards us, at the crossroads, a Mercedes with tinted windows sped. And without reaching us, about two meters away, it sharply turned around—and sped towards Mozhaisk Highway.

"We couldn't have picked a better place to talk. In front of everyone. Now that they've seen I didn't come alone, they won't show up for the meeting again. They're not idiots," I said, upset.

"Oh, to hell with them... If they really know something and want to tell us—they'll call again. And if not—it's even better that they saw: you're being covered... You know what life is like now..."

Then the car with the SOBR officers drove off to the side, into the shade of the trees. I wandered alone at the crossroads for another hour. That "Mercedes" never returned.

True, no one else from those people called me back...

These encounters—after that first Chechen assignment—are unrelated to what I am writing about today and what I remember, unable to forget, probably never.

But the longer I live, the more I become convinced of how intricately events intertwine in our present life, how they become a single, unified event for you, the causes of which you try to understand: who is to blame? such a time? such a person? such a country? yourself?...

Well, okay... Now, about what I didn't want to write then... Or couldn't?... No, after all—I didn't want to.

In Mozdok, at the headquarters of our group, I met a colonel of transport police from Moscow.

"You have no idea what was happening here under Dudayev. Not a single train could pass through Chechnya! Not one! Like in the Civil War, entire villages would come out, block the railway tracks, and loot. Now you can find entire warehouses in Chechen apartments!"

I remember he even showed me certificates: how many trains were attacked, how many hundreds of thousands of tons of cargo disappeared from trains, and finally, how often passenger trains were attacked.

I copied the figures into my notebook, thinking they would be useful later.

They weren't useful, although I had no reason to doubt their veracity.

More than that! Rather, I think today, I intuitively omitted it than consciously.

Then, already in January, I felt that the only argument of the propagandists of this war, to explain to soldiers and officers why they were thrown here, was one: we are fighting against a criminal state (since few could be convinced by the idea of "restoring constitutional order"). We are not beating the people, but strengthening Russia. That's why I didn't want to join this chorus.

The second episode I omitted was more serious, and I did so quite consciously.

A stone's throw from the dairy factory was a Red Cross post.

And the bells chime
Over the fields, sad birches.
Why are we not free birds?
Is it our fault that we are Russians?

Every morning, a crowd gathered near it, no longer paying attention to what was happening around them. They had no faces—only shadows of faces. They didn't run across the road under the whistle of bullets—they slowly walked through the bullets. With the same detachment in their gazes, they dragged on carts both the flour they received as humanitarian aid and the burlap-covered corpses of their relatives. These were mostly women, children, the elderly, old women. Overwhelmingly, of course, not Chechens, whose relatives had managed to take them to mountain villages—away from the war.

I approached them. They recognized me. And the first thing I heard was:

"Why didn't your Kovalev fight for human rights when we were forced to sell our apartments for next to nothing? When Russians were tormented? When our homes could be broken into every night?"

I approached them. They recognized me. And the first thing I heard was:

"Why didn't your Kovalev fight for human rights when we were forced to sell our apartments for next to nothing? When Russians were tormented? When our homes could be broken into every night?"

I understood the state of these people when they almost threw themselves at me with their fists. I believed them when they asked me: "Why did Kovalev come to us escorted by Dudayev's guard?" I even tried to understand them when I heard that our soldiers were met as liberators, although even then I knew that the marauders made no distinction between houses where Chechens lived and where Russians lived.

But I also knew I couldn't write about it.

Not even because I had, and still have, enormous respect for Sergei Adamovich Kovalev and am convinced that every one of his actions is honest, sincere, and courageous.

No, precisely then, in January '95, it was precisely on Sergei Kovalev, Chairman of the Presidential Human Rights Commission, that the perpetrators of the war and the tragedy of Grozny tried to shift all their mistakes, all their crimes, all their military incompetence.

"Why was he sitting in Dudayev's basements? Whose side is he on?" a dead-tired major in Grozny asked me, cursing.

"Everyone has their own profession. And their own calling. Every society is built on the struggle of opposites. Kovalev is doing his job honestly!" I tried to explain to him.

"Oh, go to hell..." he snapped back at me.

If I had written that then, the article would have turned out not against those who started this war, but personally against Sergei Adamovich. But there were enough such articles without me.

Now, I repeat, I don't want to change anything, not a single word, in the reports that were published.

But, naturally, from trip to trip, from meeting to meeting, my attitude changed—no, not to the war itself, but to what was happening around this idiotic and bloody war.

Therefore, now I want to explain what I printed then.

For instance, the sum that, according to the SOBR guy from the Moscow region, various foreign mercenaries received for each killed special forces officer—up to 1,000 dollars—as well as the fact that each mercenary was shadowed by two Chechens—all this belongs to the realm of ordinary front-line legends. Just like the stories, repeated from publication to publication, about the elusive "white tights"—these "tights" appear in all such wars: everyone talks about them, but no one has seen them.

But the Chechen war (just like the war in Abkhazia or Tajikistan or in Yugoslavia itself) was certainly accompanied by stories repeated by word of mouth, and every storyteller claimed to have seen everything with their own eyes: for example, all the horror that Chechens castrated our captured soldiers.

I found no medical or documentary confirmation, no matter how hard I looked.

The continuation with the Yakut gold supplied to Chechnya turned out to be curious.

A few days after the publication, Valentin Logunov, my former colleague from the interregional deputies' group at the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR, called me. It turned out that he had become an assistant to Yakut President Nikolaev and that an investigation into my publication had already been carried out in Yakutia.

"So what?"

"Such a contract existed, but the firm itself was organized by a swindler and, naturally, no gold was ever delivered."

That's what Valentin Logunov told me.

I don't know, I don't know...

At least, the Prosecutor General's Office sent its investigators to Yakutia. How the investigation ended – I don't know. I wasn't informed, and I wasn't interested anymore.

And one more figure I cited in my first report: about three thousand killed by January 6th alone.

I remember, right after the publication, "Vesti" came to my place in Peredelkino, and I announced this casualty figure on the evening broadcast. The next day, I awaited an official rebuttal—it didn't come. And the next day. And the day after.

I think now that this figure is accurate.

It was then that the Maikop brigade was almost completely wiped out. The ill-fated 201st suffered the same fate.

Why are they sent there,
Mothers again weren't asked.
Why are you always killed,
The best and the most beautiful.

I think now that this figure is accurate.

It was then that the Maikop brigade was almost completely wiped out. The ill-fated 201st suffered the same fate.

Why are they sent there,
Mothers again weren't asked.
Why are you always killed,
The best and the most beautiful.

I was told about a soldier's mother who wandered around the military base in Mozdok, tugging at the sleeve of every passing commander and showing a certificate that read: "...not listed among the living, killed, wounded, or missing." The certificate was a carbon copy, and the name and surname, as always in such bureaucratic documents, were filled in by hand.

"And where did your son serve?" Colonel Alexander Chikunov asked her when she approached him at the hospital entrance, where he was recovering.

"In the Maikop brigade..."

"I couldn't look her in the eyes," Sasha would tell me later...

Then, in Grozny, eyewitnesses to the January offensive told me how and what it was like. From that January, I learned many new details of how and why untrained boys died under the command of half-trained generals. But quite recently, in the summer of '97, I heard words from Said (more on him later) that still resonate within me:

"I remember in the Staropromyslovsky district, the streets were littered with soldiers' bodies, like peas."

Like peas...

In late spring, the State Duma's Defense Committee held semi-closed hearings on the causes of death of Russian servicemen in Chechnya. I felt nothing but shame at those hearings: according to the logic of the highest military general staff, if not for bad soldiers and bad officers, good generals would surely have won this war.

How much is messed up there —
Can't be covered by lines.
And again we are blamed for everything.
Only don't betray me, Motherland,
Don't betray me.

I couldn't endure it to the end. And not just me. Major Vyacheslav Izmailov and Internal Troops Colonel Alexander Chikunov, participants in this war, also left the meeting early.

Shame for the generals...

After that January slaughter, none of our generals found the courage to say: "Enough! We've already lost too many men in a few days of war. Like peas..."

Later, much later, in Grozny, when a fragile peace was established, I saw Vasily Efimovich Sidorov, who, a year and a half after his son Andrei's death, found his remains. I wrote about this in "Novaya Gazeta" too. I received a call from the Ministry of Defense, from the "hotline"—a special phone number where parents try to find traces of their missing sons—and was informed that Private Sidorov was not on the Ministry of Defense's lists.

"How is he not on the list?"

"It means he was on the combat roster. Or they forgot to enter him," my interlocutor from the Ministry of Defense sighed sadly.

And there are many such examples. They were sent from other units. To hide losses, they shuffled the boys like a deck of cards between different units. They changed entries in military IDs. They were sent to Chechnya by deception (as Sergei Smirnov, a correspondent for "Novaya Gazeta," once recounted about a "battalion of orphans" specially prepared for Chechnya, in the confidence that no one would miss them—there was no one to miss them).

Then, in January '95, I did not yet know the full extent of this baseness...

... "We have to try to fly out from 'Severny.' Something should be going from there," Yuri Zaitsev suggested.

They saw me off. Just as we see off guests in Moscow – from the center to Sheremetyevo.

Only we rode in an APC.

I sat on the armor at first, to survey the surroundings one last time.

"Roads are becoming safer by the hour, numerous convoys — superfluous... Around us rode 60 Cossacks, behind us trailed a loaded cannon with a lit fuse..."

A broken road, pops of gunfire, cannonade beyond the Sunzha, a corpse by the road, another, another... An APC rushed towards us at the same immense speed as we were, a red Soviet flag fluttering on it, and some hit song blaring at full volume... Either "Na-Na" or Lyuba Uspenskaya... Who the hell knows...

Generals – they are also different:
Those in trenches with fighters – beautiful,
Those in offices – hideous.

Generals – they are also different:
Those in trenches with fighters – beautiful,
Those in offices – hideous.

Then I went down, under the armor. I remember two SOBR officers, pressed to their machine guns at the embrasures. Some sparse woodland with trees severed by shells...

Then "Severny." One security checkpoint, then a second, a third... We asked a general, dressed in brand new camouflage, if there was anything going to Mozdok? He, it seemed to me, glanced disdainfully at Yura's dirty camouflage and my mud-blackened jeans and snapped: "Check over there... The general is over there" — and nodded importantly in the direction of the airport terminal.

I remember some poster on the bullet-scarred wall of the airport terminal: either "Peace to the World," or something about the unbreakable friendship of peoples.

It turned out that Anatoly Shkirko, the Deputy Commander of the Internal Troops, with whom we had spent half the night at the Mozdok base, was supposed to fly.

Then — the flight. Also a machine gunner in the tail of the An. Then — Mozdok. A long wait — will there be a flight to Chkalovsk or not. The flight — with "Cargo 200" and the wounded. Meeting with San Sanych, about whom I will tell separately. Chkalovsk, the editorial office, the guys were waiting with a bottle of vodka. At night, I wrote the article and soaked my jeans clean of mud.

A few days later, in the editorial accounting department, I was asked if I had a hotel receipt. I looked at that old woman as if she were crazy.

Thus ended the first Chechen assignment.

Notebook Two

Year 1996

What to call you now,
Those who remained in captivity.
Memory cannot be cut short,
Conscience cannot be deceived.
They couldn't defeat you,
It was easier to betray and sell.

Three mothers of three sons of this monstrous war. I can inform you that your children, who were presumed missing, are alive. A field commander of Dudayev's forces asked me to convey that they are in captivity and can be found in Novogroznenskoye by contacting Umar Saydiev, head of the special department of the North-Eastern Front. Their names are: Alexey Vaterkov (from Karelia), Alexey Prokofiev (from Leningrad region), and Eduard Pritchin (from Kurgan). Forgive me, mothers of other victims of this war, that I could not bring news of your captive children.

Sunday. We are going to negotiations with Aslan Maskhadov. I don't know what we hope for, but a person cannot live without hope. Just like humanity.

A day ago, we crossed the border between Dagestan and Chechnya. A field commander in Gerzel village tells us:

"Tell me, why are they bombing our villages? Let them bomb the militants, but what do peaceful residents have to do with it?" And he adds: "Inform Yeltsin, he doesn't need to give a billion dollars for the restoration of Chechnya. Let him rather give that money for miners' salaries, and leave us alone."

Then a boy appears with three "Shmels" — a deadly weapon against Russian military vehicles. He smiles:

"You hit three tanks from a column, and the rest stop immediately and the soldiers scatter."

He smiles, and I am scared. No, not because he will now see an enemy in me and, mistaking me for a tank or APC, will fire this "Shmel." It's just that this boy grew up this way. And we made him this way. We. All of us together.

Now, as we go to negotiate the fate of prisoners — no, not only the Novosibirsk OMON officers, but all those who became "Caucasian prisoners" three months, six months, a year ago and were forgotten by the callous Pavel Grachev (in the list that the guys from "Memorial" handed me, there are one hundred twenty-nine of them) — yes, now I recall this image and the smiling boy with the "Shmel."

Now, as we go to negotiate the fate of prisoners — no, not only the Novosibirsk OMON officers, but all those who became "Caucasian prisoners" three months, six months, a year ago and were forgotten by the callous Pavel Grachev (in the list that the guys from "Memorial" handed me, there are one hundred twenty-nine of them) — yes, now I recall this image and the smiling boy with the "Shmel."

I was here a year ago, at the beginning of this idiotic war. Then Grozny was being taken and the Russian flag was raised over the former regional party committee building. Then at least it was clear where the front line ran—that front line which we ourselves drew on Russian territory. Today, nothing is clear at all. You drive a kilometer—federal blockpost. Another kilometer—Dudayev's militant blockpost. You look right out the car window—a field, mud, dugouts, tanks, APCs, boys in military uniform, gloomily watching us. You enter a village—the same guys with rifles. But not the same ones, others. Opponents of those sitting in the mud. Our guide picks up a man in camouflage. He extends his hand: "I'm the deputy regimental commander for logistical support." And immediately corrects himself: "Of the militia regiment." That is, not ours. The enemy's. The one against whom the federal troops, exhausted by the senselessness of this war, are fighting.

There is no front line here. Here is a highway between Rostov and Baku, with federal troop checkpoints and posts of troops consisting of people, old and young, who just recently went through the same Soviet Army school as their enemies.

Yes, so, Sunday...

"Come on, show your deputy's ID, show our credentials," says Nadyr Khachilaev, chairman of the Union of Muslims of Russia, who, like Bagautdin Magomedov, a deputy of the Dagestan People's Assembly, is part of our delegation for negotiations on the fate of prisoners. "Come on, come on..."

Before us is an army checkpoint. And behind our cars are more cars, mostly trucks, carrying people going to a rally in Grozny.

"Back! I'll shoot! Back!" yells a soldier when I try to explain that we're not going to a rally, we're going to Novogroznenskoye, where a meeting with Aslan Maskhadov is scheduled.

"I'm telling you! Back! Everyone—back!"

And I see in his eyes only the hatred of an exhausted boy, whose fate it was to play at war, but not in a children's sandbox.

We barely found an officer. We waited a long time for him to connect with another officer, and then that one with another, and another, and another...

Behind, Chechens cried out, like a flock of disturbed birds. I look back—a sea of green flags: these are the people with flags, as I learn later, just before my departure, from the daytime "Vesti," who were holding a rally in Grozny.

That's it, that's it... They are ours, but they are different now. I don't know who became older, who younger, but no one will ever make these people, our fellow citizens—former, current, future—stop shouting "Allahu Akbar!" and fighting for their independence.

"Just tell them in Moscow that we are not animals. Chechens are not animals!" an old man approaches me. "You live like this, and we—like this. And then we will love each other again."

Well, that's it, negotiations are over. The tank dug into the ground is already behind us. And the soldier with an aimed rifle. And—the war.

At the entrance to Novogroznenskoye - a market. Children are running. A crowd, women. In the kiosks - almost like in Moscow - Snickers and Pepsi. Here - peace. Just half a kilometer from the war.

Novogroznenskoye is a village between two blockposts, where, a few days before our arrival, the Novosibirsk OMON officers, captured near Pervomaysk, were located, before they were moved to the mountains.

An ordinary village, where nothing reminds one of war. Except for one thing: it is here that the meeting and negotiations about the fate of prisoners with Aslan Maskhadov are scheduled.

Novogroznenskoye is a village between two blockposts, where, a few days before our arrival, the Novosibirsk OMON officers, captured near Pervomaysk, were located, before they were moved to the mountains.

An ordinary village, where nothing reminds one of war. Except for one thing: it is here that the meeting and negotiations about the fate of prisoners with Aslan Maskhadov are scheduled.

I expected to see trenches, posts, heavily armed militants, to hear: "Stop, hands up! I'll shoot!", I expected to finally experience a sense of danger from touching what was happening. But nothing of the sort! A village like any other, people like any other, roads like any other, cars like any other, life like any other. Only the meetings were unexpected.

Former zootechnician, now field commander Nasir Hadji introduces a guy:

"This is Ibrahim. He carried out the operation to unblock Pervomaysk. Tell us, Ibrahim..." And then to me: "He's a modest guy. Doesn't like to talk."

Here there are their Matrosov and Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, their Rokossovsky and Zhukov. Here are those who fight against federal troops. That is, against us. Against us, against us. With whom "us"?..

"When your troops surrounded Pervomayka, and there were over seventeen thousand of them there, and ours..." says Ibrahim, the famous field commander... And then immediately: "Ours, yours... We were all one, and then suddenly..."

And further about how they already planned to take another village to exchange Raduyev's group for other hostages, how fiercely his guys fought, how they broke through the encirclement. In his voice, the excitement of a victor over Barsukov's mighty army can already be heard, when suddenly—again about the same thing: how did it happen that we became enemies—I, a Russian, and he, a Chechen?

"When one of our fighters dies, it's a tragedy for us, but for you, an entire battalion perishes—and everyone sleeps soundly. We feel sorry for your guys. With contract soldiers, we are merciless, but these boys..."

Should I believe him? Or not believe him?

Should I believe that our prisoners are treated with care, or dismiss it as just a propaganda game? I don't know, I'm not ready to answer... But the animal and the human always coexist in people. And here, their nationality doesn't matter anymore.

An army major, just half a kilometer from Novogroznenskoye, where famous Dudayev militants walk around, exchanging news, told me that a day ago they detained a fifteen-year-old Chechen boy who was selling vodka diluted with clonidine to a soldier. "They detained him—and then what? They thought about exchanging him, and then decided—to hell with it, let him go wherever he wants."

There's that too. There's both. Blood and atrocities, heroes and scoundrels. But above all this—money.

Later, returning to Moscow, I heard from my colleague, State Duma deputy Hamid Gamidov:

"Raduyev told me: 'It seems that Barsukov and Dudayev have one owner. And he sits in Moscow.'"

I apologize to my colleague for relaying our private conversation, but I heard the same thing from many, many people during this assignment. Everyone—both federal officers and Dudayev's militants—is convinced that colossal financial interests are behind this war. And even when some talk about independence, and others cannot understand what the Kremlin wants from them: to strike down all Chechens or to leave, everyone together asserts that such savagery and nonsense, such dirty games, can no longer be tolerated.

Well, okay... Everyone knows about that anyway.

So, Sunday.

We sit with Aslan Maskhadov. First, the entire delegation. Then—one on one.

"Go to Moscow. Tell them there to hand over our fighters," I heard from Maskhadov. Just a few minutes before this, in the cramped room of a house at the entrance to Novogroznenskoye, I saw the mothers and wives of the Novosibirsk OMON fighters and realized that our mission—to return the prisoners—would most likely fail.

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 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.

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.

If I were, say, president, and had to voice all the fantastic ravings of his assistants, I would believe it and say: yes, since they "squeezed in," we must "squeeze them out." A strike from helicopters! A salvo from a "Grad"! Attack, forward... For the Motherland (or what do guys die for there today?)...

But I've just returned from there, from Novogroznenskoye...

And only some utterly lazy retiree from the CIA didn't know that Maskhadov, Raduyev, and Basayev were there, that the headquarters and even a special department were there.

More than that! When on the way to Novogroznenskoye we talked at a blockpost with our officer, he, having learned to whom and why we were going, said: "Maskhadov was there about two hours ago. I don't know if he's still there or has already left..." He said it as one collective farm chairman used to speak about another collective farm chairman, whom he had just seen at a meeting of the district party committee.

Yes, everyone knew that the famous Dudayev commanders were gathering in Novogroznenskoye. But I saw neither pillboxes nor dugouts there, nor what military propaganda calls "enemy bases." Ordinary village houses—I saw them; women hanging laundry—I saw them; children running in the streets—I saw them... And men, young and old, of course, too. And those who didn't want war, and those who were used to war.

Only the "Grad" system doesn't distinguish who is who: it strikes at the living, at all living things. Only bombs and shells don't care what will be in their path: trenches or a garden with an old man digging in the soil. And that's why only now do I understand the words of one field commander: "Well, they should actually bomb our bases, our positions. War is war, and at least you know what you're dying for. But what do peaceful people have to do with it? Women—what for? Children—what for?"

I see only one reason why Novogroznenskoye was suddenly remembered now: it is there that, however fragile, negotiations about the fate of Russian prisoners are taking place. To allow them to succeed would mean to hasten the end of this senseless war.

There is, however, another reason that I think about more and more. Money.

Billions and billions were allocated for the restoration of Grozny, and it is still unclear who received them. The money ran out—give us Gudermes!—until it too turns into a second Grozny. Again, billions and billions. But those who started this new operation (perhaps they failed not only history and military training in school, but also geography) are not aware that the village of Novogroznenskoye is not Grozny and not Gudermes, for whose restoration the money bag will open again.

Just a village, a village, of which there are so many across Russia.

Having reread the report and the commentary written two weeks later (they are one whole from '96 for me), I did not change a single sentence in them.

Including the last phrase: "For Russia to win, Russia must lose this war," for which some Zhirinovsky supporter snarled at me in the State Duma, and some calmer ones advised me not to forget that my word was now not merely journalistic, but also a deputy's word.

Though to this day I cannot find this distinction within myself.

Yes, in December 1995, I was elected to the State Duma from the Yabloko faction and once again entered deputyship — only this time it was already in the Russian Federation.

That is, I stepped into the same sea for the second time.

Although no. The sea had changed, and its color was somehow different, and the seagulls spoke a similar but not always understandable language.

Well, okay... About what I would like to add to that report from January '96.

There was no war,
Just people shooting
At each other.

Firstly, I was going to Chechnya for the first time as a deputy, a member of the State Duma's Security Committee, to meet with Maskhadov, with our military, and most importantly, to ascertain the fate of our prisoners.

Well, okay... About what I would like to add to that report from January '96.

There was no war,
Just people shooting
At each other.

Firstly, I was going to Chechnya for the first time as a deputy, a member of the State Duma's Security Committee, to meet with Maskhadov, with our military, and most importantly, to ascertain the fate of our prisoners.

On that trip, several journalists asked to come with me: Sasha Klimov from "Echo of Moscow," Yura Snegirev from "Izvestia," Sergey Keshishev from ATV with a cameraman, and two colleagues from "The New York Times."

Yes, and one more person tearfully begged to be taken along, to film these, as he considered them, "historic" adventures.

I'll call him - Konstantin D.

The story of how we met is very amusing.

In early spring of '91, shortly before the well-known events, he appeared at my home and for several hours dictated the story of his life into a dictaphone, starting from the mid-thirties, from his birth. The main thing in his biography was that practically from his youth, he was recruited by the KGB as an agent, and remained one at the time of our acquaintance. But the most piquant detail was something else: Konstantin D. was the personal driver of the British ambassador, and the current ambassador was already his seventh.

The story, as you can imagine, was fantastic for a journalist, and I told Konstantin that as soon as he said "go ahead," I would immediately publish the material in "LG."

It was precisely three cassette tapes with the recording of this conversation that I took with me on August 19, when at dawn I had to hastily leave home.

Two articles were published in "Litgazeta" in the autumn of '91.

When the first part of our dialogue came out, a colossal scandal erupted, primarily in England.

I felt it myself when, arriving at the editorial office, I found a whole crowd of English colleagues with microphones, notebooks, and television cameras at the door of my office. It was then, I remember, Peter Pringle from "The Independent" told me that a whole crowd of journalists—and not just English, Americans, Canadians—had come to the English embassy on Sofiyskaya Embankment hoping to meet Konstantin himself, but no one was allowed past the gates: the embassy had increased security.

I was worried: what about Konstantin himself, where was he? How? But there was no way to contact him that day.

He called me himself late that evening and said that he had been hidden from journalists all day in the distant rooms of the embassy.

"The Ambassador is very upset," Konstantin said. "He told me: 'Well, you were an agent, and you should have stayed one! Why raise a scandal about it!'"

Well, and then, when the second part came out... A big press conference, many interviews, etc., etc.

Naturally, Konstantin's fate also changed dramatically. He had to leave the embassy. He needed to earn money—he started filming weddings and other festive events with an amateur camera. But he was already swept up in various political events, and I remember him rushing to me with alarming proposals.

Why am I telling you this? You'll understand later. But for now, let's return to Chechnya, where I first went as a deputy, and with a whole journalistic crowd, so I constantly had to worry that nothing would happen to anyone.

I remember asking Viktor Ilyukhin (he was the chairman of the Security Committee) to give me something like credentials from the Duma, that is, to write some text on a piece of paper that would serve as our pass on the Chechen roads. Primarily for our own people—not for the Chechens. And I also decided to put on my deputy's badge: this was probably more of a childish than an adult political gesture.

In Makhachkala, we were accommodated in a KGB sanatorium, right on the Caspian Sea, and the agonizing days and hours of waiting began.

The thing is, Bagautdin Magomedov (at that time, a member of the Dagestan parliament and head of the regional "Yabloko") said:

"It's pointless to go without Nadyr, and he's not in the city. He's in the mountains now."

The next morning—"He's in Nalchik." Five hours later: "He'll be here tomorrow." Tomorrow: "He'll arrive in the middle of the day." I started to get a little angry, although after all my long years as a journalist, I should have gotten used to endless waiting and long, tedious journeys.

"It's pointless to go without Nadyr, and he's not in the city. He's in the mountains now."

The next morning—"He's in Nalchik." Five hours later: "He'll be here tomorrow." Tomorrow: "He'll arrive in the middle of the day." I started to get a little angry, although after all my long years as a journalist, I should have gotten used to endless waiting and long, tedious journeys.

"Can't we take a single step without this Nadyr?" I nervously asked Bagautdin.

"It will be difficult, very difficult," he replied despondently. And indeed, Nadyr Khachilaev was a significant figure for Dagestan. A representative of a wealthy clan (his brother, for example, was then the Minister of Fisheries), he—a former athlete—managed to become the chairman of the Union of Muslims of Russia, outplaying a representative from Tataria through clever intrigues.

I remember how struck I was by his house when I first visited. What a house—a veritable fortress! A towering fence, numerous guards, high-vaulted ceilings like in a castle, walls adorned with weapons, people, old and young, constantly scurrying about, women rustling in their dresses somewhere in Nadyr's vast estate. And, most importantly, an atmosphere of some mystery, frozen in the air.

In short, quite a house!

"Where is this damned Nadyr?" I wanted to ask the huge, wardrobe-like guard who opened the door in the fortress wall. But I asked, of course, politely.

"He knows, he knows... Just wait a little longer..." a young man, introducing himself as Nadyr's assistant, said softly.

But waiting any longer was impossible: the journalist guys were already suffering from impatience, and I was getting angry.

"That's it! We're leaving today!" I told Bagautdin, and he sighed resignedly... He called someone, another car arrived so that our whole crowd could fit.

Dagestani blockpost, blown up bridge, bypass road, another blockpost, Chechnya...

It was already getting dark...

"No, we won't make it today... It's dark... We won't find anyone... And anything could happen... Maybe we should go back?" Bagautdin asked, or rather, dispiritedly requested.

"Well, guys? What do you say?" I asked my companions.

"Whatever you say..."

The TV crew managed to film a panorama: a column of tanks passing about two kilometers from the Chechen blockpost, and the blockpost itself—a dilapidated structure, and an old man who passionately, gutturally, switching from Russian to Chechen and from Chechen to Russian, tried to convince us why Russians should not prevent Chechens from living as they wished. Finally, that boy with three "Shmels," who told us how easily Russian tanks were hit—he should still be sitting at a school desk, but where is that desk? (By the way, he categorically refused to be filmed until his commander allowed it. The commander tiredly nodded: "Film him, they're not from the FSB...")

Then we—in the same procession—turned back. The destroyed bridge, the bypass road, the police checkpoint...

The heavy southern twilight was already falling. There was silence: no roar of cannon fire, no scream of diving "Sukhoi" jets... It was slushy and nasty, as it always is in winter in the Caucasus.

On the outskirts of Khasavyurt, we stopped at a roadside market:

"Let's have something to drink! We need to relieve the tension!" Bagautdin suggested.

"But you're observing Uraza!" I reminded him of the traditional Muslim period of strict abstinence.

"My mullah acquaintance allowed me to drink after five!" Bagautdin explained.

"Was the mullah probably a Komsomol district committee secretary before?"

"Something like that..." he replied carelessly.

I also remember how Bagautdin sternly asked an old woman selling vodka:

"Is it fake?"

"Fake, fake..." the old woman gently confirmed.

"Give me the real stuff!" Bagautdin demanded just as sternly.

And right then, from under the counter, appeared the real, genuine, authentic stuff...

There was no particular mystery in the market traders' astonishing honesty, it turned out: according to Bagautdin, they would be punished if, God forbid, they passed off counterfeit vodka, meaning cheaper vodka, as genuine. Naturally, by a "fine," as my companion explained...

Then, having already left Khasavyurt, we stopped on the roadside, laying out our simple meal on the hood of a Zhiguli, in Russian tradition...

There was no particular mystery in the market traders' astonishing honesty, it turned out: according to Bagautdin, they would be punished if, God forbid, they passed off counterfeit vodka, meaning cheaper vodka, as genuine. Naturally, by a "fine," as my companion explained...

Then, having already left Khasavyurt, we stopped on the roadside, laying out our simple meal on the hood of a Zhiguli, in Russian tradition...

...Why do I remember this too? Both that little market on the outskirts of Khasavyurt, and that naive and amusing (for a Muscovite) "Fake, fake," and the "acquaintance" mullah?

I don't know...

I'm always surprised by the strange selectivity of memory, which, independent of your will, mixes everything together: both significant events and all the rubbish left over from that time.

But there's something to it.

Suddenly it flares up inside you—and then you understand: no, if it remained, if it wasn't forgotten, then it must be so, it was meant to be, it was written without you.

For example, the next day, when Nadyr Khachilaev finally appeared... What difference does it make, in the end, what model the car was that we then drove, leading our small column? But not to write that it was a brand new "Lincoln" (just imagine such a sight: a "Lincoln" on a military road!)—would be to deprive the space of life around you then of another color.

Yes, Nadyr appeared the next morning. But first, a joyful Bagautdin called:

"That's it, we're going today! I'll pick you up now—we're going to Nadyr's. Let the guys get ready..."

"Now," of course, stretched into an hour and a half.

We waited again...

"Mom said: 'Why are you going? What if you don't come back?'" I remember Sasha Klimov from "Echo" suddenly sighed.

One of the guys nervously laughed, recalling last night and how warily Bagautdin had looked at the darkening sky.

I knew what he was afraid of: Chechens had just taken two priests hostage. I remember him whispering to me: "Can you imagine what will happen if they take all of you too? I'll die of shame... No, we can't go without Nadyr."

I didn't tell the guys about it. But I perfectly understood why he asked to stop near that market then...

Bagautdin finally arrived. We rushed after Nadyr. That's when I first saw this rather gloomy guy in a papakha, his "Lincoln," and the jeep into which his guards carelessly tossed weapons: a couple of assault rifles and a grenade launcher.

"What's that for, Nadyr? How will we get through the checkpoint?!" I asked in horror.

"Everything will be fine. I guarantee it... It's necessary... You never know..." Nadyr waved dismissively.

Then we picked up the guys, and it turned out there wasn't enough room for everyone in the cars—one person too many.

I caught Konstantin's pleading gaze: he understood that if I were to leave anyone here at the hotel, it would be him, not the professional journalists who had to report back to their publications, TV, and radio companies.

But he was lucky. The cameraman from ATV honestly admitted: "I've never been to war. I don't know what I'll be like there. I'll only get in your way."

No one laughed. No one condemned him. Everyone understood everything.

"Don't worry, I'll film everything myself," Sergey Keshishev said and put the camera on his shoulder...

I remembered this because war is an abnormal state for a human, and only those who observe it from afar shout about valor and cowardice.

When you are there, you understand and feel more.

Even people like us—who have only touched it...

I'll add just a little more.

On the way, we got into a predicament: we had to spend a long time proving that we were not leading a convoy with green flags. At that time, I was informed that the regimental commander wanted to speak with me.

We drove to the regiment...

Passing Novogroznenskoye, we ran into concrete barriers and a barrier blocking the highway.

Only our "Lincoln" was allowed through...

It turned out the regiment was located to the right and left of the road: mud up to the knees, grey tents, tanks almost buried up to their turrets in the mud...

Nadyr remained in his exotic car, I stood, smoked with the officers, waiting for them to find the commander...

We drove to the regiment...

Passing Novogroznenskoye, we ran into concrete barriers and a barrier blocking the highway.

Only our "Lincoln" was allowed through...

It turned out the regiment was located to the right and left of the road: mud up to the knees, grey tents, tanks almost buried up to their turrets in the mud...

Nadyr remained in his exotic car, I stood, smoked with the officers, waiting for them to find the commander...

"And which faction are you from?" some captain asked me.

I replied that I was from "Yabloko."

"Too bad... It would be better if you were from Terekhov... He's a decent guy..."

But — completely unexpectedly for me — the others did not support him. Moreover! Two officers said they voted for "Yabloko"...

"So what happens next?" I asked.

"What, what? Do we know? Nothing's clear... Their headquarters is in Novogroznenskoye: Dudayev is there, Maskhadov is there... We are here, they are there. We command by day. They—by night..." explained a major with eyes inflamed from eternal insomnia, and then asked: "What's the news from your end? When will all this mess end?.."

The commander appeared. I explained to him too that those green-flagged trucks had nothing to do with us.

"Well, okay... If not, then not... Go wherever you're going..."

As we turned back towards Novogroznenskoye, a helicopter flew threateningly low overhead: once, a second time, a third... Someone even managed to photograph it. At least, someone gave me that photograph.

Why the helicopter hovered above us, I still can't understand. Maybe it was launched by that captain, the fan of the dressed-up Terekhov?

We waited quite a long time for Maskhadov to arrive. We chatted peacefully with the field commanders. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Kostya passionately explaining something to the Chechens. Bagautdin approached, pulled me aside, whispered: "You can't do that... you can't... Tell him not to say that..."

It turned out that Konstantin was telling the Chechens about his past as a KGB agent...

(Later, Nadyr told me that because of Kostya, I was also mistaken for a KGB agent, and some Chechen even remembered seeing me in Moscow in a colonel's uniform.)

I barely managed to calm Konstantin: "You came to film, so film. Don't put us in a difficult position, do you hear?"

Maskhadov struck me by not once raising his eyes during the entire conversation; it seemed as if I was talking not to a person, but to empty space.

I remember how he said:

"I could give you two or three prisoners. But you are not Zhirinovsky, to make a TV show out of it! Yes, I will release them, I will release them... As I already said, I will hand them over to their parents..."

How did I see Maskhadov then? No, not the chief of Dudayev's staff—but a man, by fate's will, who found himself on the other side of barricades built by unknown hands.

Maskhadov was a model Soviet colonel. I am convinced: if, when his division was stationed in Vilnius, he had been ordered to lead it to storm the TV tower, he would have carried it out without hesitation.

Just as Dzhokhar Dudayev was a model Soviet general (I met many who served with him before—I heard nothing but good about him).

Look how everything turned out for us!

But then, and now, Aslan Maskhadov is a hostage of circumstances. And he couldn't, as he promised me, bring Raduyev to trial for Pervomaysk, not because he didn't want to. He couldn't. He simply couldn't.

Still remembered.

A UAZ pulled up, a bearded guy jumped out, hung with machine gun belts like in some old movie. People rushed to embrace him... I don't know who he was, but there was something very touching about that scene...

In the evening, back in Makhachkala, Konstantin disappeared. He returned at night. It turned out that at Nadyr's house, he had spent a long time recounting his past as an agent and beating his chest: "Look what a scoundrel I was."

I was genuinely angry by then. That anger hasn't subsided to this day...

We flew to Moscow in a ridiculous way.

In the evening, back in Makhachkala, Konstantin disappeared. He returned at night. It turned out that at Nadyr's house, he had spent a long time recounting his past as an agent and beating his chest: "Look what a scoundrel I was."

I was genuinely angry by then. That anger hasn't subsided to this day...

We flew to Moscow in a ridiculous way.

It turned out there were no seats on the plane, except for one—a deputy's seat. Mark surprised me: he suddenly began to argue that if another seat was found, he should be the one to fly, because "The New York Times" was the main newspaper. It was the first time in my life I'd encountered such journalistic "lack of solidarity."

In the end, everyone flew. Nadyr helped, but in his own Nadyr-like way.

The thing is, at Makhachkala airport, all passengers undergo a certain customs check, which consists of the following: "Are you carrying caviar?" — "Yes." — "You can't." Everyone, of course, passes, bringing considerable income to the "customs."

Nadyr ordered an additional post to be set up in front of the ramp, which caught seven (and that was how many seats our group needed) "caviar carriers," who never understood why they weren't allowed on the plane: they had already paid the money.

To this day, I feel ashamed for those people...

A few more words about those I mentioned in my report.

Deputy Hamid Gamidov (he was the one who, citing Raduyev, told me that "Barsukov and Dudayev have one master, and he sits in Moscow") was blown up a month later right on the threshold of his house.

Nadyr Khachilaev was elected to his place in the Duma.

But after he and his brother Magomed seized the Council of Ministers building in Makhachkala, the Duma voted to strip him of his parliamentary immunity. He hid in the mountains, occasionally calling me on his mobile phone. Then events in Dagestan began... But more on that later.

Konstantin D. gave me an entire cassette tape that he had filmed during that trip.

Once, I was interviewed by some journalists from Israel: they asked for this cassette for a day. And—it was gone forever.

It's a shame. I will never deal with them again...

1996 ended with the Khasavyurt peace.

Of course, everyone understood how fragile this peace was and how contradictory the principles on which it was concluded.

They understood both in Moscow and in Grozny.

Generals called the Khasavyurt agreement a betrayal, the Kremlin found employment for Zavgayev, who had left his residence at "Severny" airport, Maskhadov in Chechnya prepared for independent presidential elections, Khattab, Basayev, and Raduyev plotted their own schemes, officers mourned their fallen fighters, quartermasters counted the money earned in the war, and only mothers... Some rejoiced that their children had come out alive from this bloody grinder, others, themselves still quite young, became old women upon learning of their sons' deaths, still others fruitlessly tried to learn the fate of their lost, missing children, knocking on the doors of government offices in Moscow and Grozny...

Notebook Three: Year 1997

Don't meet us cheerfully,
We did not arrive with victory.
Don't speak to us with songs,
Of how many fighters we lost.
The willow has spread its branches,
Still, we are not cheerful.
Today the earth woke up early.
Only don't betray me,
Motherland,
Don't betray me.

Wait, wait... Just wait, what decision will Said finally make? Will he return only Lesha Anisimov, as he promised the Pskov delegation? Will he release three more—privates Sergey Naumenko, Konstantin Losev, and warrant officer Mikhail Lobkov, as he just hinted to me? Will he change his mind at the last moment and not give anyone back?

It's up to him and only him. He's in charge, Said.

Wait, wait... Just wait, what decision will Said finally make? Will he return only Lesha Anisimov, as he promised the Pskov delegation? Will he release three more—privates Sergey Naumenko, Konstantin Losev, and warrant officer Mikhail Lobkov, as he just hinted to me? Will he change his mind at the last moment and not give anyone back?

It's up to him and only him. He's in charge, Said.

Not Senator Yu. A. Shmatov, Chairman of the Pskov Regional Legislative Assembly, who has been rushing around Chechnya for a week because of one Pskov boy taken prisoner (it happens, such leaders still exist!)... Not I, a member of the State Duma's Security Committee. Not Lecha Idigov, Chechnya's plenipotentiary representative in Ingushetia, who is right now in that half-ruined car service building, persuading Said. And not even Aslan Maskhadov, the lawfully elected president of Ichkeria!

No, only he, Said.

Four Russian prisoners are his catch, his merchandise...

He bought them two months ago from another field commander. Bought them not for resale, no. For barter.

The prisoners—in exchange for having the federal search warrant against him lifted in Samara, far from Chechnya.

"I was informed from Samara that if I released four FSB officers, the search warrant against me and my brother would be lifted. I searched for them, for a long time, but I'm afraid they are no longer alive. Then I was asked to find captive officers. I bought three soldiers and one warrant officer. I was told that two of the soldiers I bought were actually in their unit. 'How can they be in their unit when they're with me?' I wondered and sent their photographs to the 205th brigade. 'Yes, these are them, but they're not suitable, as they are deserters. And the third soldier too. We don't need such people. The warrant officer is suitable.' Then I was informed that the warrant officer wasn't needed either—also a deserter."

I heard this story from Said half an hour ago, when, after spending a whole day searching for him, we finally learned: he's here, fixing a car at the auto repair shop.

I listened to this story and thought about those scoundrels in colonels' and generals' uniforms who first brought untrained boys to Chechnya, then abandoned them here, then forgot them, then disowned them.

Yes, after the war, our prisoners became merchandise: they could be bought, sold, exchanged. So they wandered from one Chechen family to another. The going rate was a thousand dollars and up. They were objects of trade, live material to be exchanged for equally live Chechen guys held in Russian prisons and pre-trial detention centers.

It makes one's soul turn black!

But I also understand Movladi Udugov, who became furious at my timid question of how, at the end of the 20th century, one could arrive at slave trading.

"And who started it? We?! We?! Russian troops who detained people at checkpoints and then sold them! And does your Russian public know about how they traded the corpses of Chechen fighters here? What are you talking about now?"

We brought the Middle Ages here to Chechnya ourselves! We, on our bombers! We, with our "Grads." We, with deep-penetration bombs that we hurled at residential areas! We, ourselves...

What is there to talk about today?...

I hadn't been to Grozny for almost two years - last time at the end of January 1995, at the height of the battles.

I had never been to Grozny before and can only imagine how clean, green, and enormous that city was.

Now, there is no shooting here. Bombs don't fall. The noise of the "Grad" doesn't force one to flatten oneself on the ground.

But the nightmare doesn't end.

"Here was a cinema... Here—a bakery... Here—a children's hospital... Here—the Pioneers' Palace... Here—the former Party Regional Committee building..." Lecha Idigov monotonously lists as we twist and turn through the ruins.

"And where is the presidential palace?" I ask in surprise, recognizing and not recognizing the city center.

Two years ago, the palace, the former party regional committee building, though ruined, still stood. I remember, before my eyes, a Chechen sniper's bullet knocked down the Russian flag, which another idiot had ordered to be hoisted over the roof, losing dozens of lives in the process (whose glory haunted him? Marshal Zhukov's or his horse's?).

"And where is the presidential palace?" I ask in surprise, recognizing and not recognizing the city center.

Two years ago, the palace, the former party regional committee building, though ruined, still stood. I remember, before my eyes, a Chechen sniper's bullet knocked down the Russian flag, which another idiot had ordered to be hoisted over the roof, losing dozens of lives in the process (whose glory haunted him? Marshal Zhukov's or his horse's?).

"A deep-penetration bomb hit here... It penetrated everything—down to the basement... Then everything else was torn down," Lecha explains.

I look away... Though I should look, look and look...

Besides the shadows of former buildings, the city is full of the shadows of former people.

They are gone. And will never return.

"Chechnya has lost about one hundred twenty thousand people," says Movladi Udugov.

Most of them are civilians.

Militant losses total about five thousand people.

The exact losses of Russian troops are unknown to anyone. Or rather, no one wants to count them. No need... No need... No point... What, does Russia have few people?...

I wonder if Andrei Sidorov's name is on these lists, his remains having been found by his father, Sidorov Vasily Efimovich, two days before our arrival? Found in a field with the help of Chechens?

What did he ask of us, here in Grozny, on Volnaya Street, where soldiers' mothers lament their losses and cling to hopes?

He asked for help in quickly obtaining a death certificate for his son from Ivan Rybkin's commission, which is officially authorized to search for our prisoners:

"I wrote a statement... They told me to come to the commission... They will discuss it... But I'm afraid it will start a bureaucratic merry-go-round..." sighs Vasily Efimovich, the father of a known soldier—among so many unknown soldiers who remained lying in the fields near Grozny.

Oh, these Russian commissions...

Soldiers' mothers have no hope in them.

They said that commission kept them for an hour — but never even received them. There was no time, you see...

Their only hope is themselves. Themselves, the Chechens, Major Izmailov, the readers of "Novaya Gazeta" who collect money for them (I brought the latest sum collected by readers, and they all kept repeating: "Thank you, thank you everyone...", and honestly, I felt awkward about this gratitude).

No, we have wonderful people. The government—is not human.

One lost person is not yet a cause for concern for an official. We always talk about millions, millions...

I saw how the authorities of Chechnya and Ingushetia search for our lost and missing. I also saw mothers united by grief—both Russian and Chechen. Finally, I met Yuri Anisimovich Shmatov, the only, I repeat, THE ONLY regional leader who personally came to retrieve his Pskov boy.

"Will our Stavropol [governor] not come? It's close here..." asks a soldier's mother.

"They all say there's no money for it..." sighs another.

And again, we cannot raise our eyes in shame for those who could and should have been here, with the mothers. Should have... Should...

Just like Yuri Anisimovich, just like Akhiyad Turaev and Sharip Okunchaev, representatives of the Pskov Chechen diaspora, who spent a month and a half searching for the Russian boy Lesha Anisimov (and the diaspora is only about a thousand people).

Our peoples are divided into people and bosses.

I met with people. I did not meet with the bosses who officially represent Russia in Chechnya. The day before my departure from Moscow, Mr. Osipov from the presidential administration called me and informed me that Mr. Chernyshev, who was officially entrusted with the search for prisoners, had no time for me. He was carrying out an urgent assignment from Mr. Rybkin.

What kind of urgency was it, if both the Russian and Chechen sides knew why—and with what—I was coming? Movladi Udugov, the vice-premier, found time. Our bosses are always too busy...

And I travelled with a list of individuals of Chechen nationality currently held in Russian MVD prisons and pre-trial detention centers. This list contains 462 names.

I asked the Chechen side to verify the list: after all, a year ago Aslan Maskhadov told me that Chechnya did not need "Saratov criminals of Chechen nationality." I think little has changed since then.

And I travelled with a list of individuals of Chechen nationality currently held in Russian MVD prisons and pre-trial detention centers. This list contains 462 names.

I asked the Chechen side to verify the list: after all, a year ago Aslan Maskhadov told me that Chechnya did not need "Saratov criminals of Chechen nationality." I think little has changed since then.

Though no, everything has changed: prisoners have become merchandise. And for the relatives of those trying to free their loved ones from Russian prison, it makes no difference who they were before: militants or highway bandits. The father of a recidivist serving his third term bought two prisoners: hoping for an exchange. Another acquired twenty prisoners and demands a thousand dollars for each. And a third is planning a purchase to rescue his son—a petty robber...

Harsh Chechnya,
Oh times, oh time…
What have we done?..
Ruins, dust, devastation…
But life goes on!
Shot-up mountains.
Cursed war,
Why so much grief for us?

For some reason, there are kiosks with photocopiers everywhere in the city. Hot bread... Countless small markets where you can buy everything—except vodka, wine, beer: forbidden.

Children run around, many young people with rifles. And they don't look at you askance—no, they talk normally and even smile.

But the war is still right here, on the doorstep.

Children are daily blown up by mines. I dread to think what secrets the Grozny sea holds: how many ruined lives it has concealed...

The war is over. We still haven't learned its lessons.

We discussed one of the lessons with Movladi Udugov:

"You once stated that you possessed materials shedding light on the true causes and true culprits of this bloody slaughter. We waited for these materials—and did not receive them. When will they be made public?"

"What other facts are needed? Do you need a document where, say, Korzhakov writes that an attack on the Chechen Republic should be carried out? Such a document simply does not exist..."

"Naturally... But I am more interested in the financial aspects of this war... 'Novaya Gazeta' already quoted this figure: at the height of the August battles, Zavgayev's government was allocated two hundred forty-five billion rubles under only three headings: ecology, cartography, and fisheries... Chechnya became a black hole into which trillions and trillions disappeared... And we hoped that from your sources we would learn who profited from this war..."

"Many people profited from this war, not only Zavgayev and his administration, but also high-ranking Russian generals, including those Russian figures who provided general political cover. First and foremost - Lobov, who was the Security Council secretary and patron of Zavgayev... Many people received money... Money was transferred here, it was cashed out here..."

"A classic scheme..."

"There could have been thousands of variations to this scheme. But the fact remains... This was under Zavgayev's administration. And before that, Hadjiev, Gantemirov were involved... Until ninety-four, multi-billion sums flowed into Chechnya through FSB channels for Avturkhanov's group in the Nadterechny district. And it wasn't particularly hidden... You remember, an FSB (then FSK) colonel was detained then, who recounted to whom and for what he gave money: Labazanov, Avturkhanov, Hadjiev, Gantemirov... According to the lists that fell into our hands before ninety-four, up to ten thousand automatic weapons were brought into Chechnya through Avturkhanov's group. Moreover, these weapons were issued through the FSK. Everyone knows everything... They know in Moscow, they know in the Kremlin, they know in the special services... So do we need to wait for something sensational from us?"

"If you hadn't promised..."

"I promised to say what I know. And everyone in Chechnya knows that... I can only repeat... During negotiations in ninety-five, there was a man from Korzhakov who offered a certain sum..."

"How much, for what?"

"Five million dollars for the bombings to stop. There was such a man... He tried to reach Dzhokhar. We refused, as we feared a trap. And, to be honest, we didn't have such a sum of money. It would have been very difficult for us... This is a fact I can confirm. Our field commanders know about this man from Korzhakov, our leadership knows... We also know the names of all the direct organizers of this war..."

"Will you name them?"

"Will you name them?"

"That would be former Foreign Minister Kozyrev, Lobov, Shakhrai, Egorov..."

"Oh, I was waiting to see if you would name Egorov or not... His role is the most sinister... Do you know where he resurfaced?"

"Where?"

"In the Central Bank, as deputy governor..."

"Well, that's clear... Egorov is a war criminal who should be held accountable with no statute of limitations..."

"And Grachev?"

"Grachev... I can only tell you Dzhokhar's opinion of Grachev..."

"And what is it?"

"Dzhokhar always believed that Grachev was forced... But in my opinion, Grachev is a criminal who must be held accountable... Well, who else... Kulikov, who made his career on Chechen blood... Korzhakov... We repeatedly tried to contact Korzhakov when communication with Yeltsin was completely blocked... Asked to be connected, tried to negotiate..."

"Movladi, tell me, am I right or not... As soon as budget money was allocated for reconstruction, another bombing would immediately begin. And—no trace left..."

"Well, those are the laws of war... Where there's war, there's huge money. Don't think that somewhere, someone calculated everything deliberately. It's just that as the war progressed, those who had levers of influence and opportunities to earn, extracted maximum benefit from it. If a lot of money was spent on rebuilding the station in Gudermes, they wrote off that money against the bombing... The processes were uncontrolled... War, and I've seen this firsthand, gives rise to completely new laws that don't exist in peacetime..."

And, of course, I couldn't help but ask where the militants got their weapons.

"Everyone sold—from generals to privates."

Very few weapons came from abroad, and why would they?

Here's what former field commander K. told me:

"Practically, we didn't deal directly with your senior officers and generals. There were intermediaries for that. For instance, once I was told that a colonel wanted to sell a vehicle with a 'Grad' system and a KamAZ of ammunition for five thousand dollars."

"That's somewhat cheap..."

"I was surprised too, but it turned out that five thousand was for information about when, at what time, and on what road the column would travel: a 'Grad,' a KamAZ, and two APCs with guards..."

"So what?"

"We handed over the money... One APC still managed to get away..."

How many human lives, I wonder, are on the conscience of that scoundrel in uniform?

Does he dream at night of the souls he destroyed?

The war began dirty, proceeded dirty, and the traces it left behind are dirtier than one another.

But still, still...

You fed us fairy tales to our fill,
Stepsons are closer to you than sons.
From the fire into the frying pan, we go.
Only don't betray me,
Motherland,
Don't betray me.

...I stand and wait, wondering how the negotiations between Lecha Idigov and Said will end. Will he give? Will he not? All of them? One?

Ruslan, the driver, reads aloud a crossword puzzle from the newspaper "Islamic Order":

"What Chechen warriors taught Russian generals" - a four-letter word.

"What 'opposition intelligentsia' contemptuously called their compatriots who supported Dzhokhar Dudayev" - a five-letter word.

"What almost every settlement in Ichkeria experienced" - a seven-letter word.

Seven letters? Bombing? Terror? Genocide?

What have we all endured during this time?

...That's it. Said decided to release one—Lesha Anisimov.

The rest—upon provision of the guarantees we promised him: removal from the wanted list.

He was ready to give them up even so, on our word of honor.

He doesn't believe our word can be honest...

The next morning we fly out. We thank everyone. We hug. We say we'll see each other next week.

Alexey Anisimov was held captive for a year and a half.

No one came for him: his father and mother are disabled, second group. Said gave him a denim jacket as a farewell gift.

In Pskov, Alexey learned that a criminal case had been opened against him. For desertion. A year and a half ago. Based on a letter from the military prosecutor of the North Caucasian district.

"They've gone mad!" Yu. A. Shmatov called me on Friday.

Thank God, I thought, that one of the regional leaders managed to get him out of captivity.

In Pskov, Alexey learned that a criminal case had been opened against him. For desertion. A year and a half ago. Based on a letter from the military prosecutor of the North Caucasian district.

"They've gone mad!" Yu. A. Shmatov called me on Friday.

Thank God, I thought, that one of the regional leaders managed to get him out of captivity.

The most terrible and most mysterious thing for me in this war is the children.

I spend the night in Sleptsovsk at Lecha Idigov's place.

His house was in the village of Orekhovo. The house is gone. As is the village, as it once was.

He left the burning village with his wife and two children.

Ten-year-old Rita is afraid of planes and, after what happened there, talks very little.

She looks at a person, never taking her eyes off them. It's hard not to respond to that gaze. She always smiles.

In the morning, she takes my bag and carries it to the car.

"Don't, you don't have to," I whisper to her.

She shakes her head negatively.

Forgive me, girl...

As I wrote at the beginning — I don't want to change anything: from a line and a comma — to my personal assessments of the events of 1997.

But I need to explain a lot.

In order. First. What kind of assignment was this?

In January '97, a young Internal Troops officer showed me a map of Chechnya with marked villages where captive officers and soldiers were held. It was roughly indicated how many guys, "forgotten" by our generals, remained there. It amounted to several thousand people. An entire regiment left to its own devices.

We decided to publish this map in the newspaper. That's how our "Forgotten Regiment" campaign began.

Before the trip, I contacted Aslan Maskhadov and told him I had a list of Chechen citizens in Russian prisons. Remembering our conversation in Novogroznenskoye during the first war, when he told me he wouldn't exchange prisoners for Chechen criminals, this time I asked: let your people look at the list and determine who are criminals and who are fighters. He replied that his representative would be waiting for me in Nazran.

I flew to Nazran in the middle of the day.

That's how I met Lecha Idigov, with whom both I and my newspaper colleagues would later have a very significant connection.

And here again, the same road...

Traffic police post at the turn to Sleptsovskaya. Further—a blockpost with a white Ingush flag. Another one, another. The border. Finally, a green flag over the Chechen Republic blockpost. The road leads further—to the ruined, "Grad"-scarred Grozny.

Everything just as it was two and a half weeks ago, when we traveled with hope and fear that our expectations would not be met, to negotiate the release of Private Alexey Anisimov of the 205th brigade from captivity.

Everything is the same and not the same.

The day before our arrival, another tragedy occurred at the Ingush blockpost—a shootout that claimed two more human lives. Two more...

And that's why there are more people at the blockposts, conversations are tenser, document checks are stricter.

Because of this, in Ingushetia, a Volga with Azamat Nalgiev, a member of the Ingush parliament, drives ahead of us, and when we cross the border into Chechnya, a red Moskvich with Lecha Idigov, the representative of the Chechen Republic in Ingushetia, speeds ahead.

We are cautious. We cannot but be cautious. The boys we were promised to bring back are waiting for us. They are being given their freedom, and therefore nothing must happen to us.

Just two and a half weeks ago, I stood near the shattered building of the auto repair shop, waiting for Said's decision. Would he return Lesha Anisimov, as he promised the Pskov delegation? Would he hand over three more, as he hinted to me? Or would he hand over no one?

Then he returned only Lesha. The others—upon presentation of the guarantees we promised him: the removal of himself and his brother from the federal wanted list.

We kept our word: we had with us a decision from the Samara Prosecutor's Office, stamped and signed, to drop the criminal prosecution.

Will he keep his? Will he impose any more conditions? Will he make new demands?

Come on, road, faster... Come on, Grozny, get closer...

Suddenly, I catch myself thinking about the wrong things.

We kept our word: we had with us a decision from the Samara Prosecutor's Office, stamped and signed, to drop the criminal prosecution.

Will he keep his? Will he impose any more conditions? Will he make new demands?

Come on, road, faster... Come on, Grozny, get closer...

Suddenly, I catch myself thinking about the wrong things.

I understand why our miserable Kuropatkins forgot an entire regiment of prisoners in Chechnya. And why no one cares about the soldiers' mothers languishing on Grozny's Volnaya Street, waiting for news of their sons. And how it happened that it's still unknown how many people we lost in this war—I understand that too. And why the military prosecutor's office keeps sending arrest warrants to the home addresses of captured boys upon their return from captivity, as if they haven't heard of the amnesty. And even what's impossible to understand: why the state didn't have money to buy tickets to Moscow for three captured soldiers and two of their mothers. I don't understand something else. Why did Yuri Anisimovich Shmatov, chairman of the Pskov Regional Legislative Assembly, after rescuing his own boy, spend two weeks glued to the phone trying to rescue others, not his own, and then flew to Grozny again? I don't understand why Lecha Idigov rushes along these roads with us and worries just as much as we do? Wasn't his house in Orekhovo razed to the ground by Russian artillery? Isn't his daughter still barely speaking? I don't understand why Azamat dropped everything for a cause that, it would seem, had nothing to do with him? I am horrified to realize that I am losing my understanding of normal human feelings. I know that our government doesn't know how to be humane. Fat governors who forget their men—that's the symbol of power, not Shmatov, for whom everyone is his own—regardless of district, city, or republic.

...A turn, another turn... Ruins. Walls pierced by shells. The shadow of a former city... Grozny, home. Said...

"You can call Samara... Check that we're not deceiving you..." we tell him, handing over the papers with stamps and signatures.

"No need... I believe you."

...We pick up the guys the next morning.

To your freedom, Private Sergey Naumenko! And you, Private Konstantin Losev! And you, Warrant Officer Mikhail Lobkov from the 205th brigade's reconnaissance battalion!

The only document left to Mikhail Lobkov is a certificate stating that he was awarded the medal "For Courage." For courage in the battles for Grozny. For courage in this dirty war, which lies as a disgrace upon all of us. But what is he to blame for?..

"I still don't understand: why wasn't I shot with such a document?"—this question haunts him.

Even now, when everything is behind him and both the war, and the groans, and the blood, and the pain, and finally, the captivity, disappear beneath the wing of the airplane.

You were lucky, guys, that you managed to escape captivity, one wants to tell them. But those words don't come out. You were lucky, guys, that you stayed alive.

How do you like our air of freedom?

That's how we managed to get the first four prisoners out.

It was all unprecedented then. That's why, both the first and second time, many TV cameras awaited us in Vnukovo. The news spread throughout the country.

Later, it became a common occurrence. To this day, Major Vyacheslav Izmailov has rescued almost two hundred of our men from captivity, forgotten by everyone (I am writing these lines in November 2002).

Sometimes—it worked. Sometimes we faced utter failure.

How did it happen? In various ways, but not once did we pay the Chechen side a single kopeck.

Incidentally, on my second trip to retrieve prisoners, one morning, as I was leaving for Grozny, I ran into Lena Masyuk at the hotel, who was going to Grozny with her group. We chatted a bit, wished each other a safe journey... This assignment would prove fatal for Lena and her group: the very next day, the guys themselves would become hostages, and the probably bitterest days of their lives would begin for them. As far as I know, the NTV group, and before that, the ORT group, were freed for colossal sums of money provided by Boris Berezovsky. I am convinced that it is his fault—that prisoners became an object of buying and selling. He opened the gates of this market, for which all of us are paying to this day!

Yes, it worked out differently for us, but I repeat: not once did we pay a single kopeck.

Once, Andrei Nikolaev, then director of the Federal Border Guard Service, approached me. Three of his border guards had been taken captive.

"Can you contact Maskhadov or Basayev?"

"I'll try..."

"Tell them: border guards don't abandon their own. If our guys aren't released, I'll close the border to all Chechens. Tell them that... Let them release them immediately, without any conditions!"

I contacted Basayev. Conveyed Nikolaev's words. Two of the border guards immediately returned home. The third had converted to Islam—where is he now? Allah knows...

There was one failure.

A Moscow Chechen approached me: "If Gantemirov is released, we'll hand over ten prisoners."

Gantemirov was at that time imprisoned in Lefortovo, charged with embezzling several billion rubles.

I called Mikhail Katyshev, then Deputy Prosecutor General.

"But that's simply impossible! An investigation is underway, and he's not the only one involved in the case!"

"Well, at least change the pre-trial restraint to a pledge not to leave! After all—ten prisoners!"

M. Katyshev categorically refused.

Later, when Gantemirov was released by presidential decree and took a senior position in Grozny, I long regretted not having managed to persuade the Deputy Prosecutor General then.

"You see, Mikhail Borisovich, I suspected that Gantemirov would eventually be released!"

"And I couldn't have imagined such a thing!" Mikhail Borisovich sighed sadly...

There was another completely unsuccessful trip for prisoners.

Colonel Slava Pilipenko, a member of the Presidential Commission for the Release of Prisoners, once asked me to go with him to Grozny for negotiations with Makhashev (then Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Internal Affairs of Chechnya).

We flew to Mozdok, to our military base, and spent the night there. In the morning, we prepared for the road. Slava changed the license plates on his Niva, which he had driven from Moscow: Moscow plates for Chechen ones. Slava left his documents. Several guys escorted us to the blockpost, all unwashed and hungry. With them was a dog that only attacked people in civilian clothes, so I was advised not to get out of the Niva, just in case. Our companions drove back to Mozdok. We waited for the car with the Chechens, who were supposed to escort us further, to appear. We waited an hour, then a second... Slava cursed... Finally, a jeep appeared, stopped at the Chechen blockpost. We slowly crossed the "neutral" strip... There, at the blockpost, were the same guys in camouflage, only Chechen. And the same dog, which only attacked people in civilian clothes. I was again advised not to get out of the car...

From this trip, only the bitterness of useless negotiations with Makhashev remained.

Eventually, I told Slava that waiting any longer was pointless; I was flying to Moscow, as there was a plane available.

An eighteen-year-old boy with a rifle, whom they had assigned to me as a guard, walked me to the ramp.

"Bring me camouflage, huh? Bring it!" he whined.

"Why do you need camouflage? You should be studying!"

"I'll fight..."

For some reason, I remember that Chechen boy! What happened to him when the second Chechen war began? Better not to think...

I also remembered another, completely detective-like story of a rescue.

A boy, Andrei Latypov, was captured. A boy with a terrible, inhuman fate. A St. Petersburg street child, he burned in a car where he had fallen asleep. We wrote a lot about him—he underwent a unique skin graft operation in Germany. Then one of our officers adopted him. When they were traveling by electric train, from Mineralnye Vody I think, he and his father were taken hostage.

Then we mobilized everyone we possibly could...

One day, a Chechen called me at home and said that they were asking for two hundred thousand dollars for Andrei.

Dima Muratov and I met with two Chechens in the park near the editorial office.

The conversation wasn't going well: "We've already spent forty thousand dollars... These are bandits!" they explained to us. We told them: "This is a child, a disabled person..."

I remember we started yelling at them, not picking diplomatic words.

"Neither you nor you will make it home today!" one of them threatened.

We also threatened something...

Eventually, one, the older and more aggressive, asked Dima for his mobile phone. He called someone, turning away from us.

I remember we started yelling at them, not picking diplomatic words.

"Neither you nor you will make it home today!" one of them threatened.

We also threatened something...

Eventually, one, the older and more aggressive, asked Dima for his mobile phone. He called someone, turning away from us.

We parted almost without saying goodbye. But the number he called remained on the mobile...

We passed it on to the FSB guys, from the anti-terrorism unit...

In the end, Andrei was released. Without any conditions.

I've already mentioned how much Vyacheslav Izmailov did to free prisoners.

He has no fear, or if he does, it's buried very, very deep. But we, who sent him on these assignments, couldn't shake off the fear until he was back in Moscow.

About this—another notebook entry that I unexpectedly found in my archive.

"In the morning, Major Izmailov did not arrive. He hadn't arrived the evening before either: Sleptsovsk airport was completely shut down due to weather conditions. All attempts to reach Nazran, to Lecha Idigov, proved unsuccessful.

In these twenty-four hours, I had been to Vnukovo twice already—useless. The TV news crew also came in vain: neither the plane nor Major Izmailov was there.

We were all worried. We were very worried.

I don't recall now who told me back in early December—whether it was one of the Chechens or someone from the presidential administration: "The major shouldn't go to Chechnya anymore. It's dangerous now. Very dangerous..."

I told Izmailov: "Slava, maybe it's not worth it? Maybe not necessary?.."

He didn't hear me, didn't want to hear. "How do I arrange to take twenty tons on board?" he asked me.

Several months earlier (I think it was early autumn), I managed to arrange with the chief of staff of the internal troops for a humanitarian cargo for Chechen children and Russian mothers, who were there, in Grozny, on Volnaya Street, living only on the hope of finding any trace of their missing sons, to be loaded onto a flight departing for Vladikavkaz.

"Every trip Izmailov makes is a chance to snatch another of our guys from captivity," I explained to the general.

He understood everything immediately and promptly called the commander of the Internal Troops aviation on another phone: to help "Novaya Gazeta" and our major.

After the unexpected dismissal of Internal Troops Commander Anatoly Shkirko, everything changed—there was no one left whom one could simply call and, within a second, agree on a common cause.

But, fortunately, the major managed to arrange something with someone, and so he flew there, to Chechnya, managed to call from there and report that everything was fine and that he was returning to Moscow with another prisoner.

But Major Izmailov still did not arrive and did not arrive...

We were sitting at the dacha in Peredelkino: me, Dima Muratov, and some of the other guys.

Night was already falling—and suddenly a knock at the door—there stood Slava and a young boy.

A passing car had picked them up, and now he was with us.

"Where have you been? What happened?"

"The second prisoner was stolen. Right near the ramp..."

It turned out there were two prisoners, the second being a border guard.

No sooner had Slava stepped off the ramp than two unknown men rushed up, grabbed the guys without explanation, and threw them into a car.

Slava mobilized everyone he could at the airport.

One of the guys was found in the square near the airport terminal. "They told me: 'You're not one of ours, get out...'" he told us already here, in Peredelkino...

It became clear: the border guards had taken their prisoner.

I called the duty officers all night long—no one could give me a clear answer. Only around seven in the morning did Nikolai Bordyuzha, who had replaced Nikolaev as director of the Federal Border Guard Service, call:

"Sorry... Our fault. I ordered our soldiers to meet them, and they carried out a whole special operation... Well, you know what they say: give a fool a task and he'll screw it up..."

And we had that too.

Yes, and one more story, funny but typical for that (and our) time.

"Sorry... Our fault. I ordered our soldiers to meet them, and they carried out a whole special operation... Well, you know what they say: give a fool a task and he'll screw it up..."

And we had that too.

Yes, and one more story, funny but typical for that (and our) time.

When I returned from Novogroznenskoye, Vladlen Maksimov (his father, a famous Soviet intelligence officer, managed to name his son both Vladimir and Lenin simultaneously, but we all just called him Vladik) asked to go to Chechnya. "Go ahead!" I agreed and started calling various local officials to help our guy or—if necessary—to protect him from any adventures.

He flew out. He arrived. He started working there. And suddenly—he disappeared.

You can imagine what I must have felt: an old fool sent a young boy to where he should have gone himself. And I also imagined what my friends from Ruslan Aushev's presidential administration, primarily Ingushetia's Vice President Boris Agapov, whom I had asked to cover our guy, were feeling.

Now, honestly, I don't remember the details: who did I call? whom did I ask? with whom did I argue? from whom did I expect help?—but suddenly the phone rang at my place in Peredelkino:

"It's me, Vladik. I'm flying out of Ingushetia today."

"Where have you been? What happened to you? Why did you disappear?"

"Well, I was taken hostage... It was very funny," he replied.

I asked Mumin Shakirov (then he worked in the investigation department of "LG," and later literally chose "Svoboda"—the radio station of the same name) to meet Vladik.

Late that evening, the guys drove to Peredelkino, and Vladik, still nervous but already laughing, told me what had happened to him.

Yes, he was met. Boris Agapov took him under his wing. Vladik settled in the house of the brother of the field commander, the commandant of Bamut. So, he should have been completely safe on all sides. More than that! He managed (and honestly, I was proud that the guy on his first wartime assignment did what a journalist can and should be able to do) to get to the outskirts of Novogroznenskoye and witness how "Grads" destroyed what had been peace just two weeks earlier.

And then he crossed the border between Chechnya and Ingushetia.

"I went to the market in Sleptsovsk... Just for nothing... Suddenly, three Chechens approach me, ask who I am? I answer: a journalist from 'Litgazeta.' They tell me: 'You will be our hostage. You will answer for Chechnya!'"

"And what did you do?"

"I was overjoyed!"

Do you understand?

Journalism is such a profession, and I understood Vladik's reaction.

I myself dream of that—even now that I'm grown up—of flying in a plane, and suddenly terrorists hijack it. In my youth, I even had a phrase prepared for such an eventuality: "I agree to be a hostage." No, now I wouldn't utter that phrase so idly, but then I thought—how much joy there would be when I suddenly appeared in my editorial office with a sensational piece.

Yes, but Vladik was let down.

These three guys, fighters for Chechen freedom (I repeat, that's how they introduced themselves to Vladik), turned out to be ordinary bandits. After talking about freedom, they asked Vladik for his leather jacket and wedding ring, the putting on of which at his wedding with Nastya I witnessed (a terribly convoluted sentence, forgive me).

And then (as Vladik told me) a complete phantasmagoria began.

He—without a jacket—called the vice-president. The latter mobilized all the police at his disposal. Two of the three were arrested. A sad Vladik, who never became a hostage, was giving testimony to the police when the brother of the Bamut commandant rushed in (and it should be noted that for kidnapping a guest in the Caucasus, according to normal Caucasian laws, the penalty is more severe than arrest, trial, or Lefortovo) and asked him:

"We'll shoot them in front of your eyes, do you want that?"

Vladik, of course, did not want that...

I could never have imagined that two years later, this story would continue.

That was a completely different time: there was a small and fragile peace in Chechnya.

"We'll shoot them in front of your eyes, do you want that?"

Vladik, of course, did not want that...

I could never have imagined that two years later, this story would continue.

That was a completely different time: there was a small and fragile peace in Chechnya.

I flew to Chechnya to negotiate a prisoner exchange, carrying two lists: Russian soldiers and residents of Chechnya held in Russian prisons and pre-trial detention centers.

I flew through Ingushetia. Next to me on the plane was a member of the Ingush parliament, a Chechen by nationality.

He asked why I was flying. I explained why. He asked me to show him the list of Chechens arrested in Russia.

He read it for a long time. I watched how carefully he studied the Chechen surnames, which to me were all the same in their spelling (just as, probably, typical Russian surnames were the same to him). Then he told me:

"Free this guy. He's my uncle's nephew... You know, they gave him seven years for taking a jacket from some journalist."

"I know that journalist!" I replied proudly.

That's how it worked out. Or didn't.

And finally.

In my report, I included an extensive interview with Movladi Udugov.

As I already said, I'm not going to change anything: it was what it was. Especially since the time of the Chechen wars is very compressed: a day felt like a week. And each day I remember was different from the last. And—the person in that day.

I never found Movladi Udugov likeable (especially since he once put me on a list of enemies of the Chechen people—for no good reason, just because I provided a small foreword to an American report), but at the time he was a vice-premier, and I wanted to learn unknown details from him about the political decisions that led to the war.

From both the Moscow and Chechen sides.

What was true, what was not in what Udugov said then—I don't know. But you won't get the truth in Moscow either!

Therefore, I don't regret that interview with him.

But I learned one small detail, a nuance of his biography, that explains his attitude towards Moscow and Russia.

It turns out, in 1978, Udugov applied to the journalism faculty of Moscow State University and failed to pass the competitive exam.

"They didn't accept me because I'm Chechen!" he is convinced. And no matter how much I tried to convince him that it was nonsense and absurdity: he just didn't pass, I myself missed the passing score by one point!—I couldn't prove anything to him.

But in Moscow, meeting with the dean of the journalism faculty, Yasen Nikolaevich Zasursky, I told him:

"If you had accepted Udugov, maybe there wouldn't have been a war!"

We both laughed at this absurd assumption, but on the other hand, sometimes a mere trifle, a bit of nonsense, a speck of dust, can change the entire course of history...

Notebook Four: Year 1998

Civil war,
Broken roads.
Silence exploded,
And many won't be awaited.

Why did the Soviet army defeat the Russian army in Chechnya? This question has long bothered me.

Not because, of course, I dreamed of Pavel Grachev taking a parade of victorious warriors in the center of Grozny. On a white horse, naturally.

In this war, there is only one victor – the scoundrels who earned their meager billions on someone else's blood.

I think about something else. About what I had never thought about before—about military art. Do you need to graduate from the General Staff Academy to, like in January '95, throw defenseless tanks into the narrow streets of Grozny? What is the point of a Communications Academy if they were firing at their own due to its absence? What kind of rear services specialists are these, with all their academies, directorates, and hundreds of generals, if soldiers were asking for bread from passing Chechens?

After all, in the end, builders, engineers, and teachers who became field commanders and front commanders won the war against professionals whose training cost taxpayers dearly.

The two warring sides were united by only one thing: everyone mastered military science together—in the ranks of the Soviet army. Did some master it better? Did others turn out to be failing students?

Now is the time to figure out what happened.

After all, in the end, builders, engineers, and teachers who became field commanders and front commanders won the war against professionals whose training cost taxpayers dearly.

The two warring sides were united by only one thing: everyone mastered military science together—in the ranks of the Soviet army. Did some master it better? Did others turn out to be failing students?

Now is the time to figure out what happened.

"When I saw a column heading for Chechnya here in Ingushetia, I clutched my heart: fuel tankers, ammunition vehicles, and APCs were all mixed together. One shot—and everything..." recalls Ruslan Pliev, Chairman of the Ingush Parliament, a former professional soldier and regiment commander who was the first to enter Kabul, about the beginning of Grachev's victorious operation. "I ask a soldier with a bird-like neck, holding a grenade launcher: 'What's that you have?' — 'A pipe.' — 'And did they show you how to shoot this pipe?' — 'You put it under your arm...' — 'On your shoulder, you fool, on your shoulder...'"

I remember, having found myself in this war for the first time (it was January '95), I myself was struck by the hellish chaos and confusion, noticeable even to an unprofessional eye.

I travelled from Mozdok to Grozny as part of a large motorcade. Our KamAZ was the last in line. Not far from Grozny, in the foothills, where the remains of a Russian plane lay in the valley, the engine stalled. The column moved on, leaving us alone. "Have you been driving long?" I asked the driver, a Yakut boy. "Three months..."

I remember a strange feeling of abandonment: dusk was already falling, only one Kalashnikov for all of us, the colonel had forgotten to provide an APC for cover... Brrr...

Then—we got lucky.

But I felt this abandonment of our soldiers and officers every time I found myself in Chechnya.

I also remember how, in February of the previous year, in Novogroznenskoye, where I was waiting for Aslan Maskhadov to arrive, field commander N. told me how he went to rescue Raduyev, near Pervomaysk:

"Yours were standing there... Ours were coming from there... Then yours retreated... And ours..."

He suddenly faltered and said:

"'Yours,' 'ours'... But before, we were all 'ours'..."

War divided us, but even in this division, something remained indivisible. And I heard stories more than once—from both sides—about how former comrades in arms clashed in battle and ceased fighting. Where would we go from each other, if only because of our shared past.

And that's why, during my last Grozny assignment, when I asked Chechen field commanders how they assessed the actions of the Russian army, I didn't feel I was talking to representatives of an enemy army. No, I was talking to people who, just like all of us, were stunned by what the once unified army had become.

Ruslan Kutayev, former Vice Prime Minister, and now advisor to Aslan Maskhadov, was not a field commander.

"I wasn't lucky. I was given a different task."

"What kind?"

"You remember that the Russian leadership created the appearance that the entire people supported Zavgayev, Hadjiev, Avturkhanov. Even so-called parties were created. In this regard, in autumn '95, a meeting of Maskhadov, Udugov, Khalimov, and Kutayev took place over two days in one of the mountain villages. I was tasked with: entering the CNS round table, breaking up its participants from within, and leaving nothing around them. This task was successfully accomplished. And when a congress of parties and movements of the Chechen Republic took place in April '96, all participants declared that they were with the Chechen people fighting against Russian troops, and that Zavgayev was merely a semblance of a Chechen..."

"So you played the role of Stierlitz?"

"Something like that..."

Nevertheless, as a representative of the republic's highest leadership, Ruslan Kutayev was aware of all military matters:

"Rokhlin would never in his life have believed how many people fought against his corps. He would certainly have argued that it didn't correspond to reality. After all, only twenty-two people defended the tram depot near the October District Department of Internal Affairs for three days—they were transported across the Sunzha. Twenty-two people! And throughout the entire war, no more than five hundred fighters actively engaged in close combat against his corps."

"Rokhlin would never in his life have believed how many people fought against his corps. He would certainly have argued that it didn't correspond to reality. After all, only twenty-two people defended the tram depot near the October District Department of Internal Affairs for three days—they were transported across the Sunzha. Twenty-two people! And throughout the entire war, no more than five hundred fighters actively engaged in close combat against his corps."

Vakha Arsanov, Vice President of the Chechen Republic—in peaceful pre-war life, he was a traffic police inspector—on the contrary, is considered one of the most experienced military commanders in Chechnya. He personally conducted several famous operations against the Russian army, including the assault on Grozny. Here is a record of our conversation:

"What's your assessment of the Russian army? What became of it? Why did everything Russian generals started fail?"

"First. Unpreparedness of military leaders, inept planning of operations... And second: you didn't pay attention to your military personnel..."

"Us?"

"The Russian side... The Russian government... We saw all of it. When I came out of the forest, arrived in Grozny to carry out certain tasks, it was shameful to look at Russian soldiers. Imagine! A man who lives in the forest, in a dugout, in an earthen shelter—he is clean, shaved, trimmed, immaculately dressed. But your conscripts were just pitiful to look at! Begging for bread from passersby! To what state have you brought the army! So how could it succeed? First, I repeat, unpreparedness, ineptitude in developing operations. Second: disrespect for their soldiers. And third: Russian soldiers didn't know what they were fighting for. When a person doesn't know what he's fighting for, and when he's deprived of basic conditions, he cannot fight well."

I give you my honest word—the war is over, there are no secrets left—we ourselves abandoned positions, we didn't surrender them. We simply left... But we always said: one must give battle, and then retreat. Why? Because the tactics of Russian military leaders were studied "from A to Z"...

"And what were these tactics?"

"They brazenly went on the assault. But if they met strong resistance, they immediately retreated and started demolishing house after house. Instead of developing an operation, determining the enemy's numbers, identifying their commanders, where to retreat in case of withdrawal, and so on. And instead of blocking the enemy's location, they, on the contrary, always left a corridor. Not for us—for themselves."

"Why?"

"They knew that if a Chechen is in a cage, he will die. Or kill. So they left a corridor of one hundred, one hundred fifty meters..."

"Which of your own operations do you consider the most successful?"

"There were several."

"Which front did you command?"

"The North-Western. At the same time, I was also commander of the Chechen-Dagestani defense line... Do you remember the story with the border guards on the Dagestani border?"

"Alas, we remember..."

"And I also commanded the sabotage battalions that operated in Grozny... I had not only to hold the front line but also to conduct these operations... It was strange to hear on television: one APC hit, two APCs hit... Not a single day passed without four or five APCs being hit!"

"Exactly in Grozny?"

"Exactly in Grozny... I'm not talking about the front line..."

"You've reassured me! I thought that generals and colonels were writing off APCs to you, and then selling them back to you..."

"We didn't buy armored vehicles. We only took them... Of course, the main hunt in Grozny was for mercenaries, for special services personnel... Otherwise... We almost didn't touch officers and conscript soldiers..."

"But still, the most successful operation?"

"The March assault on Grozny. That operation was very well planned... But when the Russian army started launching missile and bomb attacks on the civilian population, we gave our troops the command to withdraw."

"Our generals claim that the capture of Grozny in August was a complete surprise to everyone..."

"But still, the most successful operation?"

"The March assault on Grozny. That operation was very well planned... But when the Russian army started launching missile and bomb attacks on the civilian population, we gave our troops the command to withdraw."

"Our generals claim that the capture of Grozny in August was a complete surprise to everyone..."

"They lie... Seven to ten days before the operation, I prepared an appeal to Russian soldiers, police officers, and citizens of the republic stating that we would enter the city in the near future. I wrote: 'We have nothing against you; stay at your checkpoints and don't stick your heads out... If you don't shoot, we won't open fire either.' Our entire war was against Zavgayev. We had to prove to Russia and the world that there was no Zavgayev government! There is one legitimate authority in Chechnya... The uniqueness of this operation was that the day the Chechen resistance army would enter the city was known in advance. And the Russian generals and the puppet government—everyone ran away!"

"So you warned them that you were coming for them?"

"Yes. And each of those who entered Grozny, 830 people, was ready to stand to the last! It was funny for us to hear: 'Oh, they'll loot the city and leave...' They thought the March scenario would repeat itself... No, everyone decided to fight to the death... I remember when Aslan told me that we had to surrender one position and give up eighteen prisoners, thirteen of whom were high-ranking officers—I was ready to die rather than obey the order..."

"And..."

"But I couldn't disobey the order of the Chief of the General Staff, and I had to hand over those prisoners. And even abandon two or three positions... By the way, we could have taken the city in two hours back in January '96, but Dzhokhar categorically forbade it: there would be unnecessary casualties... Maybe something would change in Russia, maybe Yeltsin wouldn't win the elections... In August '96, we understood: we couldn't wait any longer."

"Tell me, which of our generals, in your eyes, was a worthy opponent?"

"Romanov. He was a true patriot of Russia..."

"Many officers who participated in the war told me that two-thirds of our troops' losses were from their own side..."

"Possibly... I'll give an example. At 5:30 AM on January 1, 1995, with eighteen fighters, I was surrounded between Lermontov and Pervomayskaya streets, where the first city hospital is... The ring closed completely. I had to fight my way out of there—for three days. And at 5:30, I decided to leave... Russian APCs spotted me, and I had to engage in battle. The Russian unit retreated about fifty meters and called for reinforcements. And the 'reinforcements' started shooting at their own men... We sat, watched this strange battle, and ate apples we found in the house... The battle lasted about three hours.

And there was another moment. On December 31st, '94, a column was moving along the Grozny-Garagorsk highway, and in the fifteenth state farm between the first and second sections, internal troops were stationed. And when the column was moving—at night, at half past twelve, the Internal Troops opened fire on this column. They retaliated... The battle lasted about four hours... By morning, so many armored vehicles had been hit, so many cars burned... This was all due to lack of coordination."

"The war is over... But when you hear Raduyev's statements about the possibility of terrorist attacks in Russia..."

"We have strong reasons to believe that explosions are currently being prepared in three Russian cities. But who is preparing them? A criminal boss came to Grozny and offered a well-known field commander thirty million dollars to take responsibility. And this criminal boss's family was taken hostage. When we had all the information, I was forced to make a statement that these sabotage acts had nothing to do with Chechnya, and pursued only one goal: to stop the peace process in Chechnya and prevent the signing of a peace treaty between the Chechen Republic and Russia..."

"But still, Raduyev's statements..."

"After that, I called Salman and spoke with him very seriously... He apologized and said that there could be no talk of any campaigns into Russia, and he would only carry out the orders of the legally elected president..."

"But still, Raduyev's statements..."

"After that, I called Salman and spoke with him very seriously... He apologized and said that there could be no talk of any campaigns into Russia, and he would only carry out the orders of the legally elected president..."

...More than once, I asked the leaders of the Chechen Republic, and field commanders, and simply Chechen soldiers, which of our Russian units were best prepared for battle: paratroopers? marines? internal troops? And I always heard in response: aviation and artillery.

Those who shot and bombed, without distinguishing between militants and children, old people, women...

Where the defense line was, and where a kindergarten or hospital.

...That morning, it unexpectedly snowed.

We drove to Orekhovo for the mournful and sorrowful Feast of Sacrifice in memory of almost a hundred villagers who had died exactly two years ago from Russian artillery, Russian aviation...

"I was shaving when my wife screamed: 'Tanks! Tanks!'—and fainted... I remember almost nothing of what happened next... Whoever managed to get out—got out..." recounts Lecha Idigov, Chechnya's representative in Ingushetia, my eternal companion in the search for captive boys.

The same familiar road... Before Grozny—turn right.

A forgotten Russian blockpost, a former filtration point with silage pits where people were dumped, a bullet-riddled "Urush-Martan" sign...

Further, further, further...

Sign for "Orekhovo".

"Why did they cut down all the poles! They had only just extended electricity right before the war..." Lecha sighs.

A destroyed APC...

Entrance to the village. Or rather, to what remains of the village.

Even now, a few days after my trip to Chechnya, I cannot recount what I had to see there.

It seemed that nothing could be more terrifying than what I had seen in Grozny. I was wrong.

Oh, I thought, to organize a tourist trip here for those who unleashed this war. Let one of them freeze beside the ruined mosque. Let another weep before what was once a home. Let a third bow at the feet of a Chechen old woman, somehow living among the ruins. Let a fourth explain why, just yesterday, a bull calf exploded on a butterfly mine, prohibited worldwide. Fifth, sixth, seventh... Let, finally, Boris Nikolaevich explain to the mother of an unknown soldier, whose corpse was found by Chechens only a week ago, what all this was for...

What else would I like to add to this strange conversation with a man who, throughout the first Chechen war, commanded a front where thousands of Russian boys laid down their lives? A conversation with an enemy—even if, at the time we met him in his vice-presidential house, surrounded by heavily armed guards, he already held a high civilian post in Chechnya? A conversation with a wolf in sheep's clothing?

I've heard similar accusations against myself far too often...

But I also heard from field commanders what our Russian generals didn't hear, and couldn't (or didn't want to hear): "What have we done to OUR army?" Or: "To what state have we brought OUR army!?.."

OUR, OUR, common, Soviet, through which everyone passed in that first Chechen war: both those who shouted "Hooray," and those who shouted "Allahu Akbar..."

Honestly, I don't remember the details of that trip to Grozny and the meeting with Vakha Arsanov very well (if not for that dialogue published in "Novaya," much of it would have faded from memory).

Most likely, like all trips in '98, it was connected with the search for our missing soldiers.

As in the other trips then, Lecha Idigov accompanied me from Nazran to Grozny. Our military observer Vyacheslav Izmailov was with me. I remember when we were brought to Arsanov, he recognized Slava: "Ah, the same bald major! Whenever I saw you, I always ordered: 'Don't shoot that bald one!'" (And Slava went without weapons and a head covering throughout the entire first Chechen campaign.)

Before the war, Vakha Arsanov, a traffic police captain, worked in Moscow. He and his brother had a small business, he said. "When the war started, I took the last thing I had and went to Dzhokhar's aid," I asked. "Vakha, how much was the 'last thing'?" He replied, "Two hundred thousand dollars." During our long conversation, his assistant came in and announced that it was time for prayer... "I'll be right there... Wait..." Vakha requested.

He likely didn't have such breaks during his traffic police work in Moscow...

It seemed to me that during the time between the two wars—and I hadn't been to Chechnya during that period—Grozny had acquired more wealthy people, more expensive foreign cars navigating through the ruins, immeasurably more mobile phones...

Wealth against a backdrop of universal poverty—images quite familiar to us by now. But wealth amidst ruins is perceived much more sadly, hopelessly, and causes much more anger... Why is there such a contrast between the "pre-war" and "post-war" Grozny? Once again, throughout these notebook entries, I have to return to the topic of money in the Chechen war.

In early December 2002, FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev solemnly announced that it had finally been revealed:

700 million rubles allocated to Chechnya for social needs had been stolen.

Finally!

Even those who didn't know exactly what was really happening in Chechnya, how much money was disappearing into the Chechen black hole—even they stared at the TV screen in surprise.

What? 700 million?

"Anti-news!" my young colleagues from "Novaya Gazeta" commented on Patrushev's announcement.

As early as 1998, Ramazan Abdulatipov, then Russian Deputy Prime Minister, told me (the interview was published in Novaya Gazeta):

"...Where did the money for Chechnya go? After all, when checked, it turned out that not one hundred twenty billion, not two hundred twenty billion went to Chechnya. According to the Security Council's calculations—one trillion two hundred billion!

— In 1997?

— Yes... The money came through various channels... For example, Khlystun (then Minister of Agriculture. — Yu. Shch.) and I are now looking for where eighty-seven billion, allocated to Chechnya for agricultural programs, disappeared. Khlystun knows nothing about this money! I know nothing! In Chechnya, they know nothing! Where did the money go?

From the Ministry of Finance—allegedly to Chechnya as early as January last year..."

So, five years later, it is officially confirmed: 700 million rubles have been stolen.

War in Chechnya—money. Peace in Chechnya—money. The change from war to peace, and from peace to war—BIG MONEY.

And that's why it was so bitter and sad for me then to listen to Vakha Arsanov—an opponent, an enemy, a stranger: "And your conscript soldiers were simply pitiful to look at! Begging for bread from passersby!"

How many times: dozens, hundreds during Chechen assignments!—I saw these heart-wrenching, anti-human scenes.

Both hungry and freezing in the trenches, and abandoned, and forsaken by their generals, and betrayed by politicians.

I remember, back in early '96, I described my feelings upon meeting Defense Minister Pavel Grachev:

"To be honest, both I and my Duma colleagues, inviting Pavel Sergeyevich to appear urgently at our session to explain the reasons for another bloody defeat of Russian troops in Chechnya, were convinced: no, he won't come, he'll brush it off, he won't hear, he won't want to hear. Eternally flattered by the president, what did he care about public opinion, devastating newspaper headlines, the choked cries of mothers through tears: 'What are you doing to our sons?'—and public accusations from army comrades of being incapable of leading his own army.

More than that! No one was particularly surprised when Gennady Seleznev left the hall to inform Viktor Chernomyrdin of the Duma's decision, and returning, reported that the prime minister could not find his defense minister: he floated through politics freestyle, teaching this liberty to his subordinates, who, without blushing, recounted legends and tales of Ancient Greece about unidentified flying objects delivering deadly bomb strikes on Chechen villages before television cameras.

But eventually Pavel Grachev was found, he came to the Duma session, he answered our questions for an hour.

There's a semi-diplomatic formula: "His answers left a mixed impression."

Yes, when Pavel Grachev was in the Duma, I spoke at a State Duma session for the first time.

I asked him: "Aren't you ashamed of what you've done? If I were in your place, I would resign."

He replied: "If you think so, I will resign."

There's a semi-diplomatic formula: "His answers left a mixed impression."

Yes, when Pavel Grachev was in the Duma, I spoke at a State Duma session for the first time.

I asked him: "Aren't you ashamed of what you've done? If I were in your place, I would resign."

He replied: "If you think so, I will resign."

Our strange dialogue was shown, I think, on all news channels. A few weeks later, Yeltsin removed Grachev from his ministerial post, but I don't consider his resignation my achievement. Moreover! I think Boris Nikolaevich simply needed to tell people: I'm good, but my ministers are bad. Finding scapegoats—that's becoming our Russian trend.

Pavel Grachev left...

Pavel Grachev remained...

His current position is an advisor on African markets at "Rosvooruzhenie." The money he receives there (much more than as a minister), I hope, will help him brighten his old age, so as not to wake up at night in terror from a nightmare: the corpses of soldiers and officers that littered the streets of Grozny.

Over the years, dozens of soldiers, officers, and even generals—real, combat-hardened ones—have become my close comrades.

They were the ones who told me the whole truth about this war: about mortars from 1939, where out of three shells (1938 model), only one was fit for firing; about "combat pay" rotated through Voenbank that never reached those it was intended for; about modern sniper rifles that, for some reason, only militants had; and about bribes to Moscow superiors for medals and Hero Stars.

And about much, much more...

Once, when a joint trip to Chechnya by representatives of two Duma committees—security and defense—was planned, the General Staff for some reason decided to invite us so that the generals could report on how they were managing military operations in Chechnya.

That was the first time I found myself at the General Staff and was stunned by the number of generals I saw there (there wouldn't be enough rams for papakhas for all of them!).

We sat at a long table, listening to the speaking military commanders. Everything was solemn, official, and boring.

During the break, someone coughed politely behind me.

I turned around—and saw a Lieutenant General with a small notebook and pen in his hands.

"Your shoe size? Head size?" he asked.

"What?" I didn't understand.

"Well, your sizes, to get camouflage in Mozdok..."

What do my sizes have to do with anything? Why is a lieutenant general dealing with this? What, aren't there enough sergeants in the army anymore?

I opened my 1998 notebook with a meeting with Vakha Arsanov, who presented his concept of why the Russian army lost to the Soviet. Jumping ahead a bit, I want to continue this theme with a story about the guys I met there, in Chechnya, a year later, in the tragic and anxious year of 1999. Here's what I wrote then under the impression of that meeting:

"How old was I? Twenty? Twenty-one?

I don't remember.

I remember being given Bulgakov's "Master and Margarita" at sixteen. I still feel like a boy when I read "Master" over and over again.

With Bulgakov's "White Guard" — it's worse. I became more than an adult. Yes, I was twenty-one already.

"Great was the year and terrible was the year after the Nativity..."

Remember?

"But days, in peaceful and bloody years, fly like an arrow, and the young Turbins did not notice how, in the bitter frost, white, shaggy December arrived."

Well?

..."On Nikolka's shoulders are sergeant's epaulets with white stripes, and on his left sleeve a sharp-angled tricolor chevron..." And then: "Nikolka's eyes grow dim."

Bulgakov. "The White Guard."

I met the guys at Vnukovo airport. Thanks to the girls from the parliamentary lounge (how many times they helped us, picking up soldiers from the gangway who Slava Izmailov had rescued from Chechen captivity)—they helped this time too. Only this time, the guys had arrived from the front.

Their commander, Sasha, was the last to exit the plane.

He and three of his soldiers flew to Moscow at the invitation of Sergey Govorukhin and Yura Pavlenkov for an evening commemorating those who died in the six years of the Chechen war.

"How's the arm? Still alive?" I asked Sasha.

"Stop it... These are my guys. Meet them."

Their commander, Sasha, was the last to exit the plane.

He and three of his soldiers flew to Moscow at the invitation of Sergey Govorukhin and Yura Pavlenkov for an evening commemorating those who died in the six years of the Chechen war.

"How's the arm? Still alive?" I asked Sasha.

"Stop it... These are my guys. Meet them."

I met Sanya in December '99 through Yura Pavlenkov (he worked at the General Staff of the Ground Forces then). He had been wounded in the leg, and Yura advised him—or rather, asked him!—to go to a military hospital. "No, the guys are waiting for me," Sanya replied.

I started to find out why the guy was so eager to go there, to Chechnya? Who was he? And who were these guys?

Our life is like on a blade,
We're in someone's throat.
It's more useful to plow the land,
But you have to shoot, though it's tedious.

I found out: two Orders of Courage. Two Medals "For Valor." Nominated for Hero of Russia. He hates war. For him and his men, war means special operations that have to be conducted in Grozny, in Shali, in Gudermes. They weren't allowed to eliminate Basayev. Khattab outmaneuvered them in one skirmish in Dagestan. He considers OMON officers Gestapo agents and marauders. He distrusts the MVD and FSB. He came to Moscow to get mountain boots and black uniforms for his men. But there was no money for it.

Two months later, he was wounded again. Again, he will be nominated for the title of Hero. In the hospital, Sanya will be hinted that he should send a box of cognac to the Ministry of Defense. Calling me, he cursed: "Yura, they can go to hell..."

Then his commander, a Hero of Russia, called: "Help Sanya. He is our pride."

I failed to prove that Sanya was the pride of our army. "Well, what? We'll give him a third Order of Courage... He's still young..." This is what I was told by officials from the Ministry of Defense, who grabbed military awards in Arbat alleyways far from the front.

(I dare not name Sasha's surname or his unit—too much money is offered for his head. But believe me—he is the honor of our army.)

Well, all right... I got sidetracked.

Though no. No. It's all about this.

"How's your arm? Still alive?..."

"Stop it... These are my guys..."

...His guys turned out to be—just guys.

One, Zhenya—twenty-one, the second, Andrei, the oldest of Sasha's fighters—twenty-six. The third—another Andrei—twenty.

The first has an Order of Courage, the second—an Order of Courage and a Medal "For Valor," the third, the youngest, twenty-year-old—an Order of Courage.

And the commander, Sasha, in his thirties—with an iconostasis of his awards.

I'm telling you how it all was.

The first has an Order of Courage, the second—an Order of Courage and a Medal "For Valor," the third, the youngest, twenty-year-old—an Order of Courage.

And the commander, Sasha, in his thirties—with an iconostasis of his awards.

I'm telling you how it all was.

How they took off their jackets in the parliamentary lounge at Vnukovo airport. How, embarrassed by their medals, they walked past officials and generals to drink coffee and beer. How I introduced them to Maxim Likholetov, their peer from MGIMO, who had just finished his internship with us in the State Duma's Security Committee and rushed to Vnukovo. How we then showed them Moscow: "Here's Leninsky Gory... Here's Kutuzovsky... Here's the Kremlin... Here's the Duma... Here's the former Central Committee, Voloshin... Here's our newspaper..." How then Aunt Lyusya, the savior of our not-so-wealthy correspondents, fed them in our canteen... How then we went to my dacha in Peredelkino, where my friends, Irina Sabova and Vladislav Teplenko, prepared dinner for the guys... How in the evening Maxim and his MGIMO classmate Sergey took the guys on a tour of night Moscow, while their commander Sasha lulled his wounded arm... What the next day was like, the official one, at the "Meridian" Cultural Center, where, at the call of the younger Govorukhin, gathered those who fought in Chechnya by someone's will and who remember those who remained there forever, eternally. And how our fighting guys turned away from the TV cameras... And there was one more day in Moscow, an evening in Moscow, when we sat in Peredelkino... Pavel Gutiontov (for readers, Secretary of the Union of Journalists), Anatoly Golovkov, a wonderful journalist and bard (for listeners), Dima Muratov, editor-in-chief of our newspaper (for thinkers) arrived. The youngest of the four soldiers, the twenty-year-old decorated Andrei, turned out to be from Grozny.

In January '95—yes, in that very January, when I sped in an APC through the destroyed center, already used to seeing bodies, former people, lying on the roadsides—he was studying at a school in the Staropromyslovsky district.

"Didn't you know there were battles going on in the city center?" I asked Andrei.

"We still thought we could finish school..."

In the school, windows were already shattered by bombing raids, and teachers—both Chechen and Russian—took class registers home so they wouldn't be destroyed by the bombings. There, on the outskirts of Grozny, everyone still thought it would pass, that the war wouldn't touch them. After all, they were still children.

"Were there only Russians in your class, or Russians and Chechens?"

"Half and half. And what, is that important to you?" Andrei asked me.

"No... And then what? It's war..."

"Then my father told me: 'It will probably be very difficult here. Your uncle is coming for you. You'll finish school in Stavropol Krai.'"

"And why did your father stay?"

"He's an oilman. He thought things would get better..."

Andrei finished school there, at his uncle's. He could no longer enter the Grozny Oil Institute, which his father had graduated from: neither the institute nor Grozny itself existed. Then his parents also had to leave Grozny. Then Andrei was drafted into the army. Then—he ended up in a small unit commanded by Sasha, where courage was not valor, but a job. That's how life turned out.

Well, and then...

Then, then... In January 2000, twenty-year-old Andrei stormed his own house. And—for taking his own house—he received the Order of Courage.

"Tell me, young man, could it have happened that your classmates, Chechens, would have been shooting at you from your own house?"

"No... No... I know all my friends. Their parents also took them out of Grozny then, in early ninety-five..."

"Do you know where they are now?"

"In Stavropol, even—in Moscow."

"So who are you fighting against there?"

"Not against my own... Chechen guys from Grozny don't fight."

"And who does? Mercenaries?"

"Yes... And boys from the mountains, for whom Grozny is like Moscow is for me."

This, I repeat, is the opinion of twenty-year-old Andrei.

"Do you know where they are now?"

"In Stavropol, even—in Moscow."

"So who are you fighting against there?"

"Not against my own... Chechen guys from Grozny don't fight."

"And who does? Mercenaries?"

"Yes... And boys from the mountains, for whom Grozny is like Moscow is for me."

This, I repeat, is the opinion of twenty-year-old Andrei.

The guys I met in the last days of this year and century are not some jackals of war: each wanted and wants to study further. But times are such... And also (I repeat almost verbatim what I heard from each): "Neither we nor our parents will have enough money to enroll..."

While they are fighting.

And his commander, Sasha, has another operation assigned. His arm hurts.

He should be persuaded to go to Moscow, to Burdenko. But he's thinking of them.

For his guys—another operation. A special operation. Now, on the eve of the outgoing year...

Hey, stay alive!

I won't forget Andrei's story.

Storming his own house... An Order—for the storm...

Swings in the yard. Mom and Dad—and him between them. Football... A fight... A girl's gaze... Ice cream...

"On Nikolka's shoulders are sergeant's epaulets with white stripes, and on his left sleeve a sharp-angled tricolor chevron..."

Nikolka's eyes grow dim...

We are storming something.

Either childhood. Or the future.

Sasha called me last in summer 2002. From near Shatoy. The connection was very poor, and I only managed to understand that his arm was moving, and the guys were alright.

Sasha was nominated for the title of Hero of Russia twice. They didn't give it to him. He was awarded another Order of Courage—his third, I think.

He was very upset and angry.

He was hinted that he should give someone something.

He couldn't give anything—he had nothing to give.

I don't know where he is now, and I'm very worried.

I constantly remember how he lay across the sofa, his aching arm resting on a pillow, barely holding back tears from the unbearable pain.

Where Vakha Arsanov is now—I also don't know. Nothing was heard of him during the second Chechen war. Perhaps he's working as a "traffic cop" in some Emirates.

Well, all right... Into the new, anxious, dramatic year of '99.

Notebook Five: Year 1999

No one is to blame,
We're simply fewer now.
Cruel war
Will take many more.

This year, 1999, proved dark and terrible...

Everyone had a premonition that it might be the last for the Yeltsin era, though no one could accurately predict how much longer it might last.

The entire year passed under the sign of a prime ministerial merry-go-round—Primakov, Stepashin, Putin, and Aksenenko, who came after Primakov. He popped out like a jack-in-the-box: I remember Seleznev's words in the Duma, when everyone was waiting for a package from the Kremlin with the name of the new appointee: "The President proposes Aksenenko." But the package contained Stepashin's name, and there was much joking in the Duma about the speaker's faulty hearing...

Well, okay—the prime ministerial merry-go-round, which showed the fragility of Yeltsin's power, his personal vacillations either from impotence or from the fatigue of an aging man.

The year 1999 brought terrible, bloody surprises to Russia, from which we still cannot recover: apartment building bombings in Moscow, Volgodonsk, and finally, the unexpected attack on Dagestan by Basayev's and Khattab's gangs.

In that August, when it hit so hard, I had to visit Dagestan twice within two weeks, so I will combine two reports from two assignments.

First:

"On the night from Friday to Thursday, a thunderstorm began. The sky thundered so loudly that ears popped, lightning flashed across half the sky, such as you can probably only see here, in the southern sky of the anxious Caucasian foothills.

The Makhachkala-Moscow flight was delayed again, for the umpteenth time that day.

"We just brought Khattab's interpreter, and two wounded more," said a dusty OMON officer I met at the airport.

"Our wounded?" I asked.

"Wounded," he muttered and walked away to his men, equally dusty and unshaven people of yet another Caucasian war.

The Makhachkala-Moscow flight was delayed again, for the umpteenth time that day.

"We just brought Khattab's interpreter, and two wounded more," said a dusty OMON officer I met at the airport.

"Our wounded?" I asked.

"Wounded," he muttered and walked away to his men, equally dusty and unshaven people of yet another Caucasian war.

Despite the thunder and lightning in the sky, a heavy transport plane landed—the fifth in the last few hours, as far as I could count them.

And these planes, and the multitude of OMON officers at the airport, not only with automatic rifles but also with "Mukha" rocket launchers, and Makhachkala itself, where the presence of people in protective camouflage is much more noticeable than before, during previous trips to Dagestan and even during the Chechen war—all this for August '99 are much more ominous signs than any natural cataclysms. But even the solar eclipse, which I observed through a darkened glass—a SOBR guy gave it to me—did not evoke any associations with the events that once again shook the North Caucasus and all of Russia...

On this assignment, honestly, military reports coming from the fields, or rather, from the mountains of battles against Khattab's and Basayev's forces that had invaded through the Snezhny Pass, did not interest me at all: firstly, these reports are regularly broadcast on all TV news channels, and secondly, for some time now, triumphant general's reports have often been associated in my mind with a victory over common sense.

What, is Dagestan "leaving" too? Has a new Chechnya appeared on the map? Is Russia once again being drawn into a hopeless Caucasian war, mirroring the recent slaughter into which the president and his miserable Kuropatkins dragged us? To answer these utterly naive questions, I flew to Makhachkala.

I met with Magomedali Magomedov, Chairman of the State Council of the Republic, with deputies, analysts, and special service officers. I spent an entire evening with the wise Rasul Gamzatov, whose authority in Dagestan is unquestionable. I spoke with dozens of people who had no offices or power, but simply lived here and had no intention of leaving Dagestan.

So, first: Dagestan is "not leaving," a new Chechnya will not appear on the Russian map. For that to happen, Kremlin politicians would have to, at the very least, loudly declare the "restoration of constitutional order in Dagestan." As, in fact, happened in Chechnya, where senseless bombings of cities and villages, brutal "cleansing" of settlements, fascist filtration camps, and the murder of tens of thousands of residents simply because they were Chechens, forced many people, who had not even considered separating from Russia, to view every Russian as an occupier and invader.

Everyone I met in Dagestan (not only during my last assignment but also in many previous ones) has their own answer to the question of why Dagestan was and remains part of the Russian Federation. For the political elite, it is primarily a matter of retaining power. For corrupt officials and bandits (which, in principle, does not at all mean that they are not simultaneously part of the political elite, which, frankly, no one is surprised by anymore in our still boundless expanses)—it is an opportunity to convert money from the federal budget into royal mansions on the Caspian Sea: is it accidental that Dagestan is one of the most subsidized republics within Russia? But most people, who belong to neither category, cannot even imagine their lives under Sharia law, let alone under the Wahhabist dictates of Khattab himself. (In one of the "hot spots" where militants penetrated, Wahhabists are supported by only 250 people out of 2,500 residents; in another—by 150 out of a population of nearly 5,000.)

What haven't I heard! From "try to make my wife wear a burqa—you'll put it on yourself sooner" to the truly exotic: "Some negroes want to seize us." The "negroes" turned out to be Sudanese who also came with Khattab. I remember Rasul Gamzatov's words: "How can one imagine life without 'War and Peace' and without 'Crime and Punishment'?" But even people for whom Russian literature is not a daily necessity cannot do without the Russian language in their lives and daily affairs, as it connects dozens of Dagestan's nationalities.

For us, living in the central Russian plains, Chechnya and Dagestan are all the same. But the fundamental difference in the structure of these republics lies precisely in the fact that Chechnya is practically mono-ethnic, while Dagestan is multi-ethnic—a "Dagestani nation" simply does not exist in nature. That's why, when Nadyr Khachilaev and his supporters occupied the State Council building in Makhachkala, he was not seriously supported by anyone for one reason: no influential national ethnic group stood behind him. Slogans about fighting government corruption were clearly not enough to bring thousands of people onto the streets.

(In our geographical cretinism, only Americans surpass us. I won't forget how in New York, a university professor spent a long time trying to persuade me to stop bombing South Africa. "What?" I couldn't understand him at all. "Well, that Chechnya.")

This is an attempt to answer the first naive question. Now, to the second.

Do we see ourselves in the mirror of the Chechen war?

No.

I remember, and how could one forget, all my trips there, to Chechnya. Not once did I hear from any Chechen: "Thank your army for being here." Only one thing: "Please leave, leave." From their leaders to their semi-literate grandfathers.

But in Dagestan, I never once heard: why are your soldiers here, your helicopters, your special forces?

"An aggression has been committed against us. We await help from the federal center," M. Magomedov convinced me. Well, he's the Chairman of the State Council... The militants who penetrated Dagestan are not needed by anyone here, except for a few hundred Wahhabist supporters. They penetrated here by force. They want to establish their own order here, just as the Kremlin wants to in Chechnya, even if these orders are unacceptable to those who live here. That's why even Nadyr Khachilaev, the main opponent of today's official Makhachkala, doesn't urge his supporters to help Khattab and Basayev, although, as I know, he is on excellent terms with both of them.

And one more circumstance.

As soon as news broke of Khattab's militants attacking Dagestan, talk immediately began, including from official Moscow, about Chechnya and Chechen militants.

In Makhachkala, I saw Yevgeny Baranov and Viktor Shvagerius, TV-6 correspondents (with whom we had recently worked in Yugoslavia), who had just returned from the combat zone. According to them, the composition of the militants was very international: mercenaries from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Sudan. Naturally, there were also Chechens, but they were mostly hired as commanders with combat experience. And the main force of the Wahhabist movement was residents of Dagestan, primarily youth trained in Wahhabist camps.

And I remembered how, the day before, Ainudin Asadulaev, an FSB colonel who had recently retired, recounted with bitterness that as early as '92 he had warned both Makhachkala and Moscow about how and what Dagestani youth were being taught in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Malaysia.

"Well, it seems they learned..."

There was no reaction to his information.

"We always fight not with the stick, but with the shadow of the stick," Rasul Gamzatov told me.

Yes, he is a wise man. The mansions of Dagestani nobility are under heavy guard. "Here is the house of the vice-premier, here is the house of the minister, here is the house of the mayor," my fellow traveler explains to me. Once, just two years ago, a high-ranking Dagestani official almost arranged a special tour of the city for me under the tourist slogan: "Forward to investments!" Then, apparently, his courage failed him... or perhaps he simply ran out of time?

I remembered the terrible poverty in the villages where battles are now taking place: once I flew there by helicopter.

I learned that all the loud stories about combating corruption in Dagestan, proclaimed half a year ago, gradually faded into obscurity. At least, no one in the city doubts this.

And—the second assignment. Just a day ago, these were still living people. And now their bodies were carelessly dumped in the destroyed booth of a gas station on the outskirts of Karamakhi village, whose existence few knew about before the start of yet another Caucasian war.

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!).

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?"

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?"

Everyone, including the leadership of the Internal Troops, said that the border was practically open: hundreds of vehicles with weapons for the militants passed freely through Georgia and Azerbaijan. Helicopters without identification marks flew unhindered. And what? Also nothing! What were the militants counting on?

On the weariness of the people in Dagestan from the pervasive corruption of the authorities. Every position here is bought (getting a job in the police—5 thousand rubles, as an investigator in the prosecutor's office—50 thousand. I won't even mention the positions of ministers and vice-premiers).

It's a blessing that the people of Dagestan forgave the authorities their endless bribes—because being under the rule of an even more terrible evil was even harder for them, the people.

And also about our propaganda lies.

From TV reports, and already on the spot, from our military, we heard about bunkers, pillboxes, about various concrete structures, because of which the military operation dragged on for so long. But we walked around the entire village of Karamakhi—we didn't see any of this. The protracted operation, which cost many Russian soldiers their lives, was again due to the helplessness of our army.

Words fail me to describe what became of it...

One touching detail. How many times I heard:

"I feel sorry for the Russian boys—you only have one or two children in your families. But we have four or five. Let ours fight instead..."

I didn't know what to answer. I only hugged the people who told me this.

It was a difficult assignment.

For some reason, the image from Karamakhi kept coming to mind: a black cow with a shell-pierced flank, limping through the village, carefully avoiding dead cows.

...Now I simply can't recall why I failed to reach the combat zones in Novolaksky district the first time: either there was no opportunity, or someone didn't let me through.

But when — already with fellow deputy Alexey Arbatov and General Yuri Soldatenkov (then an advisor to the Minister for Nationalities) — I flew there a second time, I asked my old acquaintance Kurban to take us to Karamakhi, Chaban-Makhi, and Novolaksky.

We drove in his "Volga," with one "Makarov" for the four of us (it turned out that among local officials, including FSB personnel, a wild panic had erupted that day due to the unexpected disappearance of two deputies).

Every Dagestani village we drove past was guarded by local militiamen. We were allowed through only after a thorough document check. Sometimes the road was blocked by barricades of sandbags, although the "front line" was still very, very far away. And we understood: no foreign invaders would pass here.

Finally, we reached Karamakhi. Shots were still being fired here. Cannonade in the mountains.

Someone explained to us how to find the headquarters of General Lubenets, commander of the North Caucasian District of Internal Troops. The headquarters turned out to be on top of a hill. Our "Volga" got stuck in the mud, and we walked up, slipping on the wet slush.

The headquarters occupied a large tent. The general was incredibly surprised by such unexpected guests. We talked, drank tea... Then a scene occurred that, I imagine, was not very pleasant for the commander. He was called out of the tent; we followed him. Several local old men were waiting for him: "Comrade General," one of them, apparently the most respected, addressed him. "Carpets are being taken away, televisions are being taken away..." — "What carpets? What televisions?" the general asked, flustered. "They're loading them onto armor and taking them away..." the old man explained, adding: "They're also looting, you see..."

The general glanced briefly at Arbatov and me. "It's certainly not our guys, it's the army," and then immediately to the old men: "Exactly, I tell you, not our guys. We tear off the heads of our men for that," and to someone in his entourage: "Run, go sort it out!"

And when the old men left, he repeated to us: "We really tear off heads for that..."

The general glanced briefly at Arbatov and me. "It's certainly not our guys, it's the army," and then immediately to the old men: "Exactly, I tell you, not our guys. We tear off the heads of our men for that," and to someone in his entourage: "Run, go sort it out!"

And when the old men left, he repeated to us: "We really tear off heads for that..."

We didn't answer anything, as during our Chechen assignments, we had already grown accustomed to the sight of tanks covered with carpets... There, in the staff tent, one of the officers showed me a stack of brand new Russian foreign passports found on killed militants: all Arabic names, and on one of the photos—even a completely black face.

"I wish I could find that bastard in Moscow who supplied them with Russian passports!" the colonel snapped angrily.

Later, in Moscow, I tried to find these "bastards." And from a high-ranking official in the MVD, I heard a completely fantastic explanation: "Yes, thirty thousand blank Russian foreign passports were transferred to the Chechen Republic! Just like to other subjects of the federation: you won't deny that the Chechen Republic is part of Russia, or have you already separated it?"

(This conversation was exactly like a conversation with another government official, which happened much earlier, in August '96, at the height of the first Chechen campaign. I got a document indicating that two hundred million rubles from the state budget were being transferred to Chechnya under only two headings: "for ecology and fisheries." Furious, I went to the White House: "At least turn on the TV! There's a war going on! What ecology, what fisheries, if corpses are floating in the Sunzha River, not fish!" And in response, I heard: "Chechnya is part of the Russian Federation, or do you disagree with that?")

Oh, holy naivety! And the money wasn't small either...

Was the attack by Basayev's and Khattab's gangs on Dagestan really out of the blue? Why were the Dagestani police and local militias forced to resist them alone? Where were our internal troops? Why did no one know or suspect—where was our intelligence?—that something was about to begin here?

But, as I already said, the special services year after year reported on the danger hanging over Dagestan due to the cunning work of Islamic emissaries with local youth. This information was either not believed or not given importance. Sergey Stepashin himself, even as Minister of Internal Affairs, visited the scene and publicly stated that there was nothing terrible about Wahhabis—people are people. He even accepted a burqa as a gift from them, which, as he later told me, he handed over to the MVD museum. But even more interesting is something else!

On the way from Makhachkala to Karamakhi, approaching the combat zones, we stopped at a mortar crew positioned under a small hill.

"Khattab drove past in a car; I wanted to open fire—I was forbidden," a young senior lieutenant recounted.

"Who forbade you? Rank, position, surname?!" we demanded.

"Well, I can't say that! I have commanders!" the guy replied glumly...

I spoke with many participants in these battles—and all of them unanimously recounted: "They left calmly, as if on parade. Khattab in a Land Rover, Basayev in a jeep... With them, the militants—in KamAZ trucks..."

I repeat, I heard this from many. And I can no longer help but believe the story I was told quite recently: on the day they withdrew from Dagestan, the planes in Rostov, as if on purpose, ran out of fuel, and Russian helicopters calmly hovered over Khattab's and Basayev's convoy.

I can believe that too. Just as I am very skeptical of theories about certain "goat trails" by which Khattab and Basayev escaped into Chechnya (as various Moscow officials with big epaulets explain to me).

Yes, they left Dagestan safe and sound. The counter-terrorism operation was completed—and the mechanism for a new, big war was launched.

Who turned that key? Why did they not listen not only to Grigory Yavlinsky, who repeatedly stated that we should reach the Terek, to the foothills (where the population loyal to Russia lives) and stop there, but also to many combat generals who also argued that the slogan "Forward, to Grozny!" would lead to too many casualties and too protracted a war?

It's very difficult to find out how this decision was made in the secret corridors of the Kremlin: everyone who could give such advice is still in office and position.

It's very difficult to find out how this decision was made in the secret corridors of the Kremlin: everyone who could give such advice is still in office and position.

But after the first Chechen war, I gathered some people at my dacha in Peredelkino who were present at Yeltsin's decision then, at the end of '94: "Forward, to Grozny!"

At that time, I was the author and host of a television program on the first channel (later banned, as I was told, personally by Berezovsky), and I have a transcript of that meeting. I can quote a few things:

"Ramadan Abdulatipov testifies:

'On December fourteenth, I wrote a note to the president stating that we were going the wrong way and were effectively turning the entire Chechen people against us, that we should abandon those who had already discredited themselves with absurd political decisions, and that negotiations should be held with every leader, with everyone who considered themselves a leader, and thus dilute Dudayev among other leaders.'"

"And this note reached Yeltsin?"

"Yes... Moreover, the day before, leaders of religious movements, elders... had visited me. They asked for a three-day truce to establish contact with Dudayev. They even told me: 'If Dudayev doesn't agree to negotiations, we will enter into a direct dialogue with the people, bypassing him.' And I also wrote about this in the note to Yeltsin. And Yeltsin declared a two-day truce, starting from December fifteenth."

"Was the order for the pre-New Year attack unexpected for you?"

"The thing is, at the end of December, I contacted the chairman of the Chechen Republic parliament, Idigov (although people criticize me to this day for calling him that, but for me, the main thing was not how to call him, but how capable he was of negotiations). A day later, Idigov called me: yes, we are ready to negotiate. I received de facto permission for negotiations from Shumeiko, and through him—certain support from the president. We prepared negotiation programs, coordinated them with Kovalev, Ponomarev, Zyuganov, Lysenko, and many other State Duma deputies. And we were supposed to fly to Makhachkala on December twenty-seventh to begin the negotiation process. But unexpectedly, we were told: we need to delay the departure."

"Who said that?"

"Egorov (at that time, Chairman of the Security Council or Head of the Presidential Administration, I've forgotten already. - Yu. Shch.) officially met with us and announced that the Security Council had instructed him and Stepashin to conduct negotiations, and the negotiations could only be about one thing - capitulation. I replied to him: 'You cannot go to the Caucasus with an offer of capitulation. One can predict in advance how that will end.' Then I realized that the party of war already had its own plan... The most terrible thing was that the President became a hostage to those people who promised him a quick victory over Chechnya within a week."

Sergey Yushenkov, Chairman (in '94) of the State Duma Defense Committee, testifies:

"You remember Boris Yeltsin's famous address demanding that the Chechens lay down their arms within forty-eight hours and promising to introduce a state of emergency? I perfectly understood what it meant to threaten an entire people with a state of emergency, and I tried to find out: were there such words in the address? I was assured that there were. But Ivan Petrovich Rybkin told me that in the final version of the address, there were no such words. I call Lobov. He assures me that there are such words. 'Look at the address itself, signed by the president,' I ask him. He looks: 'Yes, indeed, there are not. But that doesn't matter. Don't you understand that we need a small victorious war to boost the president's rating?'"

"Did he really say that?"

"Exactly that, and I am ready to confirm it anywhere... This cynicism simply shocked me..."

Yes, most likely, that's how that political decision was made in December '94, for which Russia paid so dearly, for which we all pay and pay, and how much more we will pay.

I understand, different times, different presidents, different backroom conversations, and probably different secrets.

But the price is one: human lives.

After this—the September bombings in Moscow, the bombing in Volgodonsk, the famous "Wipe them out in the outhouse" and universal jubilation.

I understand, different times, different presidents, different backroom conversations, and probably different secrets.

But the price is one: human lives.

After this—the September bombings in Moscow, the bombing in Volgodonsk, the famous "Wipe them out in the outhouse" and universal jubilation.

At that time, we were in an election campaign. I think that Grigory Yavlinsky's constant warnings about the danger of a new, big Chechen war then lowered Yabloko's rating.

To hell with the rating!

How many guys fell then during the assault on Grozny! How many die there every day!

In late December '99, I wrote in "Novaya Gazeta":

"I forgot that this map hangs on my wall.

Next to photographs of my friends—living, dead, and fallen.

In 1995, this map was secret: there were Chechens—there were Russians. A border between two lives. A border—between life and death.

I asked our friend (our—that means one thing: people are above money), a former colonel of the internal troops, who fought then and knows the situation today, to walk me through this map.

He did. He, who knows every village and every mountain.

Here's what happened: Russian troops are in the same place they were in 1995.

THE SAME PLACE.

Let's sort this out. Let's...

What's more important? People or the country?

Putin is building his career on the deaths of no less than two thousand young men in November 1999 (believe me—my comrade, who returned from Bamut, having sustained five wounds in these years of our recent history, gave me this figure), but their mothers, their wives, their children are not thinking about the country. They have become lonely.

Yes, the guys are eager to fight.

But who are they fighting? What do they mean by "militants"?

A year ago I was in Grozny. I was guarded by guys from Maskhadov's presidential guard. That is, just a year ago, we recognized them. Who is fighting today?

Yes, mercenaries, who, incidentally, infiltrate Chechnya not through Georgia, but through Russia (for money, of course, even blacks!).

Yes, terrorists (Khattab, Basayev, Raduyev, etc.), whose security is ensured by Russian generals.

This is important for our understanding of the Caucasian war.

Who else is fighting?

Those whom we ourselves made into fighters—Chechen children who grew up under the bombs of 1995.

Russian soldiers die with the word "Hurrah." But behind that "hurrah"—money, about which the dying boys know nothing.

I will cite the testimony of Colonel S.K. from the General Staff, from that very first war (it just came into my hands):

"I was then at Zavgayev's and Koshman's residence at 'Severny' (the airport in Grozny: that's why Zavgayev was nicknamed Stewardess. - Yu. Shch.).

Every day planes arrived—KamAZ trucks immediately backed up to the ramp, where bags of money were unloaded... Up to a dozen vehicles passed through daily... The last meeting with Koshman, attended by nineteen ministers. Koshman says: 'Here are fifty-five billion rubles. You have a teip. Take the money for yourself. Is there somewhere in your teip to direct funds?' The man mumbled something. Bags of money were spread around the office. This was December 1996."

December 1996... 55 billion... The end of the first Chechen war. Koshman—Vice Premier in 1999.

And the guys are dying.

Once again: in whose name is the Chechen war being waged and who needs it?

Yes, terrorism, terrorists...

But not a single terrorist leader has been eliminated.

Who is dying then? For what? Why?

So that Koshman would share money? So that again, like five years ago, during the first Chechen war, money would be allocated from the budget to support "ecology and fisheries" in Chechnya?

So that not a single one of our special services would find out where the Chechens get the most modern Russian weapons (no matter how many times I asked our military leaders to give me at least one serial number of a sniper rifle made in Tula in 1999 and found with the Chechens—silence in response). Yes, the army must not be humiliated any longer.

So that not a single one of our special services would find out where the Chechens get the most modern Russian weapons (no matter how many times I asked our military leaders to give me at least one serial number of a sniper rifle made in Tula in 1999 and found with the Chechens—silence in response). Yes, the army must not be humiliated any longer.

But these words are spoken cynically, to the applause of their allies from the "Bears," Communists, and Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, people like Zhirinovsky, who do not send their own children to war.

For them, Motherland is power, not the people living in the vastness of Russia.

For them, Motherland is Voloshin, Berezovsky, and Chubais.

What should a normal candidate for president of Russia have done?

To name all the fallen Russian boys by name.

But they are a minority.

A minority—the dead and the refugees. A minority—teachers and doctors who hadn't received their salaries during his premiership. A minority—people. The majority—power and KGB active reserve officer Gryzlov, appointed by Putin to head the mythical "Bear."

That's why I look at this map from '95, trying to understand and unable to understand why we always have the same thing.

Only the guys are dying. Another generation...

...I welcomed the year 2000 at the dacha of my friend, the wonderful writer Eduard Uspensky. We, naturally, stayed up all night, hoping to catch up on sleep the next day.

In the morning, Edik woke me up:

"Get up immediately... Turn on the TV."

On January 1st, a country stunned by lack of sleep learned that Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin had voluntarily resigned, naming Vladimir Putin as his successor.

A new era was beginning.

Notebook Six: Year 2000

So that no cross would be placed over my body,
So as not to show our backs to the enemy,
With the holy names
Of our wives and brides
They named the combat
Vehicles.

The entire previous war in Chechnya was called an "anti-terrorist operation." Those who fought and died there didn't really understand the difference.

In summer, a decision was made to permanently deploy an army division and an internal troops brigade throughout Chechnya (as military garrisons).

We, a group of deputies from the State Duma's Security Committee, decided to go there and see everything with our own eyes.

I wrote then:

"September—the end of the cold summer of 2000. I returned from there on Wednesday night. Continuing my Chechen diary: it began in January '95, gunfire, fire, smoke, uncollected corpses in the streets, the basement under the Grozny dairy factory (then, unaccustomed, it was terrifyingly frightening).

...What a landscape after battle truly means, you only grasp when you look from a helicopter. We flew over practically all of Chechnya from north to south. And if in the north, above the stanitsas of Naurskaya, Znamenskaya, Shelkovskaya, there are practically no traces of war, then the closer you get to Urus-Martan, Gudermes, Shali, the more blown-up bridges, broken roads, and—ruins, ruins, ruins... Here it is, our domestic cosmos. I'm not even talking about Grozny itself anymore—if anything is to be done with this city, it's only one thing: sell it to Hollywood for horror movie filming. Yes, one more detail, wonderfully visible from the air: burning mountains. At first, I didn't understand what these eternal fires were (in one place, somewhere near Gudermes, I counted eleven of them). They explained: these are illegal oil wells being blown up. Where possible, whose are possible. And some are not... But more on that later.

The idea for this trip arose in the State Duma's Security Committee after the presidential decree on the permanent establishment of military units in Chechnya—both army and internal troops. In principle, the idea is sound and necessary: if we are to establish ourselves in Chechnya, then let it be for real, not in hit-and-run fashion, sending one battalion then another for three months... We already know how many people died in such movements. Just recall the Moscow region OMON, which never reached the final destination of its dangerous assignment...

We decided to see how this "permanent basis" was being established. How were officers and soldiers living? What weapons were they fighting with? How were they settling in? How did the local population treat them? Was care shown for the families of fallen officers?

We decided to see how this "permanent basis" was being established. How were officers and soldiers living? What weapons were they fighting with? How were they settling in? How did the local population treat them? Was care shown for the families of fallen officers?

Our delegation consisted of four people: Arkady Baskaev, Vasily Volkovsky, Nikolai Ovchinnikov, and myself. Since we were to visit the location of the 46th Internal Troops Brigade, Lieutenant General Stanislav Kavun, the Deputy Commander, flew with us (or, more precisely, we with him, as it was an Internal Troops plane). I almost forgot to write: Internal Troops of the MVD of the Russian Federation (some clever people in the MVD started getting mortally offended if you didn't add the sacred "MVD of the Russian Federation," as if the internal troops had already transferred to the tax police).

We visited both the brigade headquarters, which will be located in the area of the ruined "Severny" airport, and all five battalions scattered in different districts of Chechnya. What do these permanent deployment locations look like?

A trench is dug, encircling the battalion perimeter. Tents are erected. The Russian flag is raised. Boards with portraits of historical heroes of the Caucasian war are set up. Suvorov seems like a dwarf compared to Putin: his portrait is five times smaller than our president's. And the great construction begins: this temporary bivouac is to become a military town.

Somewhere there's already electric light, others don't have it yet... Some have only cold water, others only hot (a spring was suddenly discovered). Here, paths are already being paved with asphalt, while there, it's still impassable mud. Some officers brought their wives: they'll be living here for a long time, two years at least; others only think about how to get out of this desolation.

But again, again and again, I was convinced: our people are better than the government. The people are real, and the government is virtual.

We are accustomed to our Russian people, and especially officers and soldiers, being able to overcome difficulties. Just as we are accustomed to the government being obliged to create difficulties so that people do not forget how to overcome them.

By signing the decree in August on the permanent deployment of our units in Chechnya (the 46th Internal Troops Brigade and the 42nd Army Division), President Putin apparently did not inquire: is there money for such a grandiose undertaking?

Not a single kopeck was allocated for the new units! The command of the internal troops collected money bit by bit (the army, as I know, was in the same situation). They pooled resources, as they used to say, to ensure people had somewhere to live and something to fight with...

And they were also deceived...

Officers crowded into the staff tent—remarkable eyes, courageous faces... Oh, these guys from the internal troops! How much they suffered from our revolutionary transformations! From Fergana to Karabakh, from Ossetia to Chechnya! How many lives they laid down! And now a delegation from the State Duma's Security Committee arrives to them. Sort of the authorities... What did they ask us about? No, not about their fates at first. Why are they given discarded equipment? Why do they have outdated weapons? Why do soldiers "a meter tall with a cap" end up with them—after all, it's a war zone here? And then, embarrassed, questions: but still, how will we be paid? "Come on, come on, don't be shy..." we say. It turns out that when they were offered to go to Chechnya on this "permanent basis," they were promised two monthly salaries. On the ground, it turned out to be one and a half. (Although in North Ossetia, for example, where it's more or less peaceful now, they pay double salaries, which, in principle, is also not millions). They promised "combat pay"... "Combat pay" was almost nine hundred rubles a day, as they paid in the second Chechen war.

My colleague in the Duma, Colonel General Arkady Baskaev, recently commander of the Moscow Internal Troops District, explains:

"Well, who told you such nonsense? Yes, combat pay should be for those who participate in combat operations, who are stationed at checkpoints... But for everyone? When in that war, military officials in Mozdok, who didn't even lift their butts from their chairs, also received combat pay, that was wrong, wasn't it?"

The officers nod understandingly...

And again the question: "Will we get apartments after these two years?"

Baskaev answers a question with a question: who has apartments?

Only three hands go up...

"Who promised you all this?"

The officers nod understandingly...

And again the question: "Will we get apartments after these two years?"

Baskaev answers a question with a question: who has apartments?

Only three hands go up...

"Who promised you all this?"

They show an official military enlistment office leaflet, which states that those who go to Chechnya can earn as much as two thousand dollars a month. Well, and in the city of Kazan, they went so far as to display a scrolling ticker on TV with these fantastic conditions... We blush. We have nothing to answer.

And suddenly—a blow to the gut:

"And why does the Ministry of Communications deduct eight percent for transferring money to families from our already small salaries?"

We say something, promise something... Thank God, Baskaev managed to arrange with the governor of the Moscow region, Gromov, that he would take patronage over the 46th brigade. Maybe he'll build homes for officers? Maybe he'll supply some diesel?

They believe us. Or they don't. These men are used to doing their job honestly. Regardless of whether the government will deceive them again or not.

Arkady Baskaev looks in surprise at the tracked APC:

"Where did that come from? Such vehicles were decommissioned twenty years ago."

"Well, it's something..." the battalion commander says sheepishly.

And such is the case in each of the five battalions we visited.

I ask an artillery colonel: "What was that cannonade all night? Were they shelling militant bases?" He honestly replies: "We have so many shells that it's cheaper to fire them than to destroy them..."

Well, well! If Americans test new weapons in Afghanistan, our concern is how to dispose of old ones, accumulated over the past decades in such quantities that there would be enough for grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And I understand the surprise of the commander of the Volga District Internal Troops, whom I accidentally met in Gudermes: he sent men to fight, not to guard the oil wells of local magnates! I saw this in both the first and second Chechen wars. Just as soldiers from some Moscow region garrison are sent to build generals' dachas, our soldiers and officers in Chechnya are constantly used not only to fight terrorists, but also for a more important task—to protect corrupt officials. It is no coincidence, incidentally, that passenger buses and army APCs are blown up by landmines almost daily, while not a single fuel tanker or oil train has ever been blown up!

What is happening in Chechnya today?

Everyone wanted to return
Home, to their hearth,
But now they are orphaned
Of one soldier.
Caucasian crosses...
Behind them, widows' tears.
You'll get it on your chest,
But a friend on your head.

No fighting. But people die every day.

Shelling, landmines... Even in the Gudermes commandant's office, a landmine was found in an ammunition depot. But it's not always possible to find them.

How many militants are currently "in formation"?

"Gangs are in all districts," says Lieutenant General Yevgeny Abrashin, commander of the Internal Troops group in the North Caucasus.

Maskhadov has approximately 250 men. Basayev—300-350, Khattab (or rather, those who replaced the "black Arab" after his death)—approximately 500, Barayev—up to 600...

According to our commanders, Maskhadov's army, as such, no longer exists; that is, there is no unified command. Are they capable of partisan operations? Yes, of course. Of active combat operations—no.

The figures: 250, 300, 500—do not at all mean that all these fighters are divided into companies or battalions. No, most of them have long been in their villages. They have, as our special services say, "legalized." But there is another strange thing about this war, which I cannot help but tell.

I constantly want to name those responsible for the bloody harvest of this war. Now I know who. There are two of them: Kvashnin and Maskhadov.

Remember the attack on Grigory Yavlinsky, when—after the events in Dagestan—he proposed stopping our troops at the Terek Ridge and not going further? Thousands would die... What accusations weren't hurled at him then!

And it turns out, most generals held the same opinion. Yes, stop. Yes, block the Chechen regions disloyal to Russia. No need to take Grozny, sacrificing the lives of soldiers and officers...

Remember the attack on Grigory Yavlinsky, when—after the events in Dagestan—he proposed stopping our troops at the Terek Ridge and not going further? Thousands would die... What accusations weren't hurled at him then!

And it turns out, most generals held the same opinion. Yes, stop. Yes, block the Chechen regions disloyal to Russia. No need to take Grozny, sacrificing the lives of soldiers and officers...

Then Kvashnin, the "sweet-voiced nightingale," as he's called in the army, who whispered to the presidential candidate that "flushing terrorists down the toilet" was necessary for political victory, prevailed...

And on the other side—Maskhadov.

It turned out (and believe the reliability of this information) that Basayev and Khattab were against defending Grozny. But for Maskhadov, it was important to preserve the capital to feel like a president.

And so they played themselves into a corner. Who will answer for just one night attack, in which 26 guys from the famous Sofrino Brigade fell?

...That, that I could not imagine... In the Staropromyslovsky district of Grozny, amidst the ruins of a once great city—a parade of the Sofrino brigade.

Arkady Baskaev was so proud of his brainchild that we visited the Sofrino brigade twice—outside the official program. The last time—already on the way to Mozdok: the brigade was celebrating its anniversary.

They lit the eternal flame in memory of the fallen. Stood at attention when the entire brigade lined up for its small parade. And when they raised the third toast—to remember their friends, the brigade's chief of staff, who was acting as commander, said, nervously: "We baked a loaf of bread."

And a soldier brought in the loaf...

And if only you knew how they live there, in the ruins of the petrochemical station (if I didn't get the name of these ruins wrong)...

In Urus-Martan, in the battalion where we arrived, Chechen road workers were laying asphalt.

We approached them:

"How did you live before? How do you live today?"

It turned out that before, these people felt like... federal employees—as long as they were paid by the Rostov road construction department.

Under Maskhadov, they received five hundred rubles. Now—they were promised three thousand.

"Basayev boasted that he received two million dollars from Berezovsky... They built themselves houses... But who are we to them?" a Chechen man told me.

And added:

"Like in a movie. The Reds come—they loot. The Whites come—they loot..."

We nodded knowingly. In Gudermes, I met with the commander of the Volga District Internal Troops:

"In Argun, our guys are forced to guard some oil wells. Who ordered it? Some head of administration. I'll look into it..."

And I immediately remembered Anna Politkovskaya's article in "Novaya Gazeta" about the Chechen black oil business and who is forced to guard it.

Our State Duma colleague, Nikolai Ovchinnikov, former head of the Yekaterinburg police, had his own separate program that day: a visit to local police officers. He recounted: former operatives and investigators emerged from underground to perform their police work, which they had learned back in Soviet times. And what? They perform it, even solve crimes. But trust in the Chechen police—both from the local population and from the federal authorities—is being restored with great difficulty. A fact from Grozny's criminal chronicle, recounted by Ovchinnikov, stuck in my mind. Here is an entry from the operational log:

"An unknown APC comes to the furniture factory every evening. For tribute..."

Like in Moscow... Only there, it hasn't come to APCs yet.

In Gudermes itself, I was told that the cleanest gasoline belonged to Kadyrov, our Moscow's new protégé.

Once, they tried to destroy illegal oil refineries in Gudermes. It cost a Russian colonel his life.

We're all playing games, you government guys...

And finally.

The Russian army, in its complete poverty, armed a battalion of 600 men in Vedeno, consisting solely of Chechen boys.

Perhaps this is our new concept?

And although General Baranov, commander of the joint group, explained to us that this was, in principle, great and that the Ministry of Defense had only given them light weapons, I still couldn't understand why he was lying?

We're all playing games, you government guys...

And finally.

The Russian army, in its complete poverty, armed a battalion of 600 men in Vedeno, consisting solely of Chechen boys.

Perhaps this is our new concept?

And although General Baranov, commander of the joint group, explained to us that this was, in principle, great and that the Ministry of Defense had only given them light weapons, I still couldn't understand why he was lying?

They were given grenade launchers and mortars. And—when the guys from the Saratov special forces tried to pass through Vedeno—they were blocked by their own Chechen colleagues. Subsequently, one of these Ministry of Defense "fighters" had a rifle confiscated, with which a murder was committed in Astrakhan, and the "fighter" himself, it turned out, had been on the wanted list since 1985.

Vedeno remains to this day a place where militant leaders find refuge.

At the expense of the Ministry of Defense budget. Under the leadership of Supyan Taramov, president of Moscow's "Stark-bank."

A strange Kvashnin idea...

That's why Chechen history is a constant continuation of Moscow history.

...I didn't recognize "Severny," Grozny's main airport.

It's no longer there. Though the runway remains. The building itself is beyond repair.

The last time I flew from here was about two years ago, having emotionally cut short negotiations with Kazbek Makhashev for the release of our prisoners of war.

I remember a young Chechen rifleman, whom they had assigned to guard me, walking me to the ramp.

We had grown accustomed to each other during those days.

"Bring me camouflage," he suddenly asked.

"What camouflage! You should be studying..."

"No... I will fight. Always fight..."

Where is he now, that boy?

Did he die in the bombings? Is he hiding somewhere in the mountains? Has he forgiven us for everything that happened? Will we forgive him too?

...Then began a peaceful Moscow week, little different from others, just like it.

It's always like this: the intensity of recent impressions from the war gradually fades, clouded by new impressions and concerns.

But something seen and heard THERE suddenly emerges from the depths of memory and makes you inwardly flinch. Oh my God! How could I have forgotten a fleeting conversation with a colonel in a half-ruined dugout near Shatoy? I remember a young battalion commander shouting into a field telephone: "Neighbors, neighbors! Give a volley at the high ground..."; I remember a burnt-out APC in which the deputy battalion commander and three other guys had died a week before our arrival; I remember a Muscovite contract soldier (just a boy) who gave his Moscow grandmother's phone number. I was finding out if the soldiers were receiving the combat pay stipulated by the presidential decree—eight hundred something rubles a day (officers nearly a thousand)? Was it disappearing into quartermaster's coffers? Was it reaching everyone who had spent at least one day of their life on the brink of death?

Yes, they told me, it reaches them... And they described the mechanism of how it's done. Soldiers aren't given money directly: it's a considerable sum after all. They aren't given it upon demobilization either—who knows what might happen to a person on the road? Come home, open an account at Sberbank, and inform your unit. Only then—go ahead.

But, it turns out, parents can receive combat money for their sons.

"That's why they keep coming to us," the colonel told me. "They come and they come..."

Then we talked about something else: there were plenty of topics in war. And that phrase—I didn't pay much attention to it then—was immediately forgotten. But then, unexpectedly, in other, Moscow, weekdays, it resurfaced in my memory:

"PARENTS KEEP COMING AND COMING..."

I see, I see, how, by various means, with transfers, in general and open-plan carriages, fathers, mothers, grandmothers, sisters of soldiers given up for bloody gain, traveled from Russian towns and villages to the distant Caucasus, to war, to their sons; how they searched for their units and how they were then painstakingly explained what a financial unit was; how unfamiliar it was for them to sign in the registers of these financial units; how carefully they hid this money—unthinkable for their meager salaries and pensions!—on their way home.

Parents come not only to visit their sons! They come to them as saviors: help me, son...

Parents come not only to visit their sons! They come to them as saviors: help me, son...

Would anyone lift a hand to cast a stone at them? Would anyone speak of their lack of parental feelings? Or, perhaps, even of the degradation of their souls? Do you understand what happened? Society was long persuaded: we will bring the undeclared war to a victorious end—then we will start living better. But for now, we must endure, for the treasury is not rubber... They wanted to "wipe out" the terrorists—but it turned out they "wiped out" the whole country.

At the end of March, it was officially announced that "the war was over." At the same time, "combat pay" was also canceled.

Generally, there were many different stories with this "combat pay" – when it was truly earned, not gained for free (as in the case of numerous Moscow inspectors who managed to receive "combat pay" in Mozdok headquarters).

And they robbed the guys returning from the war (sometimes right at the savings banks in their settlements and cities), and they disappeared without a trace (numerous lawsuits are still ongoing about this), and they laundered it through the Military Bank...

But the most interesting part: the presidential decree on combat pay was not recalled by the president himself. That's why they asked us in the battalions entrenched in Chechnya "on a permanent basis": where is the promised combat pay? And they asked fairly!

But, as I found out in Moscow, the Decree was annulled by order of the Minister of Defense.

These are the laws of this strange war! Who writes them? To whom is what attributed? Whose accounts in domestic and Western banks are paid with whose blood?

He who saved his nerves is quite content.
Raise your glasses to our health,
There's a new formula in this war —
The further from the front, the higher the award.

That's why our officers there so often asked me: "Tell me, WHO are we fighting for?"

They asked, although they themselves knew the answer to this question... Yes, Grigory Yavlinsky was right, warning then, in late autumn of '99, that advancing on Grozny was madness. This is a new war!

On this trip, I heard from many generals I met that Yavlinsky, a purely civilian person, turned out to be more far-sighted than the "sweet-voiced" Kvashnin. Although I also understand Kvashnin's logic: someone who was already trying on the mantle of president needed a "small victorious war." How could one not help? And the soldiers and officers? A hundred more, a hundred less...

(Incidentally, after the publication in "Novaya Gazeta," I received a call from the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office, and they said that they were sending a special commission to Chechnya to find out what kind of "Chechen battalion" Kvashnin had formed in Vedeno with money from the Ministry of Defense. The commission, as I know, departed, but to what conclusions it came, despite all its attempts, I still don't know to this day: no one wanted to say anything.)

When our delegation returned to Moscow, we pushed a special resolution through the Duma on the situation in the 46th brigade and even managed to secure its funding in the next year's budget as a separate line item (what happened with that—more in the next notebook).

The second Chechen war differs from the first in its ordinariness.

What protests swept across the country in 1995, 1996! How many rallies, demonstrations! Just remember the million signatures collected by Boris Nemtsov in Nizhny Novgorod (for which Boris Yeltsin was mortally offended by him).

And this war is as if it's not a war. I even heard: if not for the invasion of Khattab and Basayev into Dagestan, there would have been no war at all. If only that were true!

I will quote excerpts from an article by François Bonnet, a correspondent for the French newspaper "Le Monde," who in turn extensively quotes then Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin, who gave an extensive interview to "Nezavisimaya Gazeta" after his premiership:

"Former Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin states that 'the decision to invade Chechnya was made back in March 1999.' The intervention was 'planned' for 'August-September,' precisely the period when a wave of protests swept through Russia, serving to escalate the fight against 'Islamic terrorism.' 'It would have happened even if there had been no apartment bombings in Moscow.'"

"Former Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin states that 'the decision to invade Chechnya was made back in March 1999.' The intervention was 'planned' for 'August-September,' precisely the period when a wave of protests swept through Russia, serving to escalate the fight against 'Islamic terrorism.' 'It would have happened even if there had been no apartment bombings in Moscow.'"

As the death toll in the Chechen campaign already numbers in the thousands, more and more evidence is emerging that the unleashing of the war in Chechnya was a carefully planned pre-election operation by the Kremlin. This data raises more questions about the involvement of Russian authorities in the terrorist attacks of September 1999, which claimed 300 lives, and the raid into Dagestan by Islamic militants of Chechen field commander Shamil Basayev in early August.

In an interview with "Nezavisimaya Gazeta," former Prime Minister Stepashin left no stone unturned regarding official statements that this war was a "response to acts of international terrorism" and "to incessant acts of aggression against Russia." He explained that already in March 1999, a decision was made to conquer Chechnya. "I was preparing for an active intervention; we planned to be north of the Terek in August-September." Stepashin emphasized that "this would have happened even if there had been no bombings in Moscow," and that Vladimir Putin, "then director of the FSB, possessed this information." Sergei Stepashin also expressed a critical opinion regarding the current military operation. "I would have thought twice before forcing the Terek and moving south... the blitzkrieg failed, and we encountered guerrilla warfare."

The article by the French journalist was published on January 26, 2000—our society had just entered a state of euphoria over Putin's iconic slogan: "Wipe them out in the outhouse."

Yes, they waited for this war, they wanted this war, otherwise it would not have been particularly difficult to close the border between Chechnya and Dagestan with Russian troops (and it was guarded, as you remember, only by Dagestani police and militiamen). Just as they would not have let Khattab or Basayev calmly escape retribution.

That's why we, as it were, still don't notice the second Chechen war.

It's somewhere far away, the glow of fires! It's not us, it's in another country that soldiers are dying!...

In the first 7 months of the military operation in Chechnya, Vladimir Putin's approval rating rose from 2% to 54%.

The road to the Kremlin was open.

The story of Andrei Babitsky, a correspondent for Radio Liberty, happened precisely then.

In May of this year, I wrote in "Novaya Gazeta":

"Until midday last Wednesday," I wrote in my newspaper in May of that year, "I knew only what everyone knew: the detention of a journalist at a checkpoint, initial silence, then an increasingly escalating scandal, semi-coherent comments on TV news from various semi-coherent officials, accusations leveled against him of involvement with illegal armed groups, then a retreat: someone is assigned from Moscow to the Caucasus, someone is ordered to investigate honestly and objectively.

Oh well. You all know about that yourselves.

On Wednesday afternoon, I learned that Andrei Babitsky was being accused of illegally exporting an icon from Chechnya to Moscow, that is, from war to peace. The icon, it turned out, was valued by experts from the Andrei Rublev Museum at exactly ten rubles. I managed to write a short note for the upcoming Thursday issue of "Novaya Gazeta." On the same day, or rather, still on Wednesday evening, I learned that Andrei Babitsky had been moved from the pre-trial detention center, where he was held in a cell for four, to Mozdok, our military base, where the warrant was changed—from arrest to a pledge not to leave his permanent place of residence, that is, Moscow. I remember, I even got upset that the newspaper issue was already being printed and my associations with the past (nothing to accuse him of? Plant drugs, etc., etc.—we'll put him away good and proper) were stupid and inappropriate.

Mistakes—we correct them. Got carried away—who hasn't...

That is, I still had hope.

Yes, that was on Wednesday evening... Then what happened, happened. To Andrei Babitsky, though not only to him. I suddenly realized what a threshold we stood before. Almost crossed. Or are already crossing.

Just don't say: "Oh, I see! Since a journalist, a colleague, got into trouble, you'll start scaring everyone now!"

Mistakes—we correct them. Got carried away—who hasn't...

That is, I still had hope.

Yes, that was on Wednesday evening... Then what happened, happened. To Andrei Babitsky, though not only to him. I suddenly realized what a threshold we stood before. Almost crossed. Or are already crossing.

Just don't say: "Oh, I see! Since a journalist, a colleague, got into trouble, you'll start scaring everyone now!"

I've seen many wars. I've seen how colleagues work. More often—I was proud of their work, sometimes—I was ashamed of them. We closely followed who wrote what and what was reported. We rushed to help each other if trouble arose.

Yes, but we didn't write about each other. What about us? We are merely guests of those who, not even knowing what for, die in war, remaining only in random photographs and in the never-drying tears of mothers and friends.

We tried to show, to tell, to write the truth about what was happening and is happening in reality, and we were, honestly, proud when we succeeded. After all, the truth should not be known only in some narrow presidential-general circle: we are all in one circle, in one country, and in one time. And death is the same, whether in a landfill or at Novodevichy.

So, once again—no need. I am not defending the name of journalist Andrei Babitsky. I am defending our names, yours and mine. Who are we today? Who are they making us into? Whom do we dream of trusting today? What kind of order are they enticing us with?

I ask the reader to forgive me for deviating from the chronology of events.

Let's proceed in order.

First. The most sensational news—that Andrei Babitsky was exchanged for three Russian soldiers.

I started to compare all the facts—nothing added up. On Wednesday evening, it was officially announced: he was being transferred from the pre-trial detention center, where he was held in a cell for four, to Mozdok, from where, according to reports, he was supposed to fly on a military plane to Moscow and remain there under investigation and with a pledge not to leave. What? He left the cell, said "Goodbye" to everyone, and walked alone from Naursky district to the military airfield? No, of course not. They put him in a car, brought him to Mozdok, and housed him somewhere, naturally not allowing him to contact anyone by phone (never mind field commanders! could he at least call home?) No, not a single call!

Next. Suddenly a new message: FSB officers contacted Chechen militants requesting an exchange for the journalist. No matter how many times I listened to the news afterwards, not another word about it. Already on Friday morning, Alexander Zdanovich, an FSB representative, tried to deny his agency's involvement in this exchange (and was the FSB camera at the moment of exchange also a coincidence?).

For the third year already, "Novaya Gazeta" has been engaged in rescuing our soldiers who have fallen into Chechen captivity, and we know how long, difficult, and agonizing this negotiation process can be. Does the FSB (or if not the FSB, then some other of our special services) have a direct connection with the militants? If so, why haven't they used it before? How many more guys could have been saved!

But where did the prosecutor's warrant prohibiting Babitsky from leaving Moscow suddenly disappear to? He couldn't leave Moscow, but he could go to the militants? Because of Andrei's story, as officially reported, acting Prosecutor General Ustinov also went to Chechnya. And where did he disappear on the way?

In other words, I cannot imagine how this operation could have been carried out in real life and within real timeframes.

I have serious doubts about the video recording itself, which circulated on all TV channels for all subsequent days: this video recording lacks one thing—a line at the bottom indicating the date and time it was made. That's one. And why were those who handed over Andrei unmasked, while those who received him were masked? That's two. If he was handed over to some unknown individuals at the height of fierce fighting, then on the part of those who handed over the journalist, it was pure arbitrary action.

The letter sent to the federal authorities concerning the exchange of Andrei Babitsky bears the signature of field commander Usa Khadzhiev. I spent two days trying to find out who this was. SUCH A FIELD COMMANDER DOES NOT EXIST. Only a rank-and-file militant with that name was found, but his influence on the decision to release three Russian prisoners of war is zero.

The letter sent to the federal authorities concerning the exchange of Andrei Babitsky bears the signature of field commander Usa Khadzhiev. I spent two days trying to find out who this was. SUCH A FIELD COMMANDER DOES NOT EXIST. Only a rank-and-file militant with that name was found, but his influence on the decision to release three Russian prisoners of war is zero.

Who then were the Chechen participants in the video show, so reminiscent of the famous scenes from the film "Dead Season"? Who was hiding behind those masks? Why did we hear not a word from them? We only saw the theatrical embraces of the "masks" with Andrei, which, according to the creators of the story, were meant to prove to everyone who watched them: they gave up our man, they gave up a militant.

This is what, as a person who has been involved in investigations for twenty years, troubled me first and foremost.

But now—to the second point: from mundane logic to political logic. What kind of person was a Russian citizen working for Radio Liberty supposed to appear to the country as? (And how many Russian citizens are currently working for foreign companies? I'm not even talking about those, including high-ranking officials and their family members, who have millions in foreign banks. That's another story.) What kind of person... I'm trying to find a definition... I found it: "a literary Vlasovite."

In the TV news, high-ranking Russian politicians appear one after another. Defense Minister Sergeev: "I would exchange a hundred Babitskys for three of our soldiers." Interior Minister Rushailo: "He asked to go back to his own—so they let him go." First Deputy Chief of the General Staff Manilov: "Where he came from—there he went." And finally, this is what acting President Vladimir Putin answered when asked how he would have acted in Babitsky's place (this was on Friday, at a semi-closed briefing for journalists): "As a true patriot, I would not have agreed to this exchange."

Yes, you democrats...

I don't vouch for the exact wording, but I vouch for the meaning: Babitsky is something like Basayev, only smaller...

But I will quote Andrei Babitsky's own letter (here it is before me) verbatim:

"Wishing to assist the Presidential Commission for the Release of Forcibly Detained Military Personnel, I agree to participate in my exchange for Russian servicemen through the mediation of field commander Turpalaali Atgeriev. I wish to emphasize that I have not the slightest doubt in my own innocence, and therefore my decision is dictated solely by the desire to assist in the release of prisoners of war. I undertake, for my part, understanding the humane purpose of the commission's work and fully sharing its goals, to in no way undertake actions that would discredit its reputation. I am confident that Turpalaali Atgeriev will not undertake such actions in his proposals and will be guided by humanitarian considerations."

I reread Andrei's letter again and again and suddenly, for the first time, I notice a detail I had overlooked: the date marked on this letter.

January 21st!

He was detained on the 16th. For several days, nothing was heard of him. That is, on the day this letter was written, he was still being held at the filtration point (he was only transferred to the pre-trial detention center on the 26th).

Oh my God!

There was no international scandal yet. The acting president had not yet intervened, the special investigator for particularly important cases of the Prosecutor General's Office had not yet been dispatched, and the Prosecutor General himself had not yet moved. There was no absurd accusation of stealing an icon worth ten rubles yet!

That is, nothing had happened yet, but the operation was already prepared. An operation in which Andrei Babitsky was assigned his own role.

All this time they lied to us, accusing journalist Babitsky of collaborating with terrorists, dragging his name through the mud. Perhaps an international scandal was also needed for Chechen leaders to understand: such an exchange for three young soldiers would be equivalent.

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.

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.

What has begun to happen to us?

We understand what.

I remember once, in my youth, the wonderful artist Boris Zhutovsky explaining to me the two components of fascism—it doesn't matter with what sign: totalitarian propaganda and totalitarian terror. Totalitarian propaganda will brainwash millions into applauding totalitarian terror. Until it touches the individual himself.

(In totalitarian propaganda, we have already reached certain heights. This was shown not only by the past election campaign but also by the story of Andrei Babitsky. I haven't seen anything more vile recently than Leontyev's "However": having initially declared Babitsky his friend, he for some reason remembered that during a period of poverty, the latter sold fish. It's easier for Leontyev: he spends his whole life shuttling between Gusinsky and Berezovsky, calculating who will pay more for his dirty merchandise, wrapped in a bright, glossy shell.)

I repeat, we are in danger. Not just those who write, speak, or appear on TV. We are a multitude of "I"s, and a sword never distinguishes whose head it will fall upon. One consolation: later, they might rehabilitate...

The story of Andrei Babitsky is one such confirmation.

Another—Moscow's sluggish reaction to the victory of the far-right in Austria. Unlike the rest of the civilized world. What, has the slogan "Fascism will not pass" become irrelevant for us? Are we ready for this too?

Third—the reason for Yevgeny Primakov's refusal to run for president of Russia: "the impossibility of doing so in an uncivil society."

And society—that's all of us. And "non-citizens"—that's us too.

Then we will be surprised in a year or two, where we were before, fearfully looking at each other and asking each other: "Look who's here..."

It's no coincidence that in Davos, four representatives of our establishment hesitated when asked who Putin was...

That's what I've been thinking about lately.

That's why Andrei Babitsky's story is so compelling to me.

That's why I'm warning you.

Where is he now? In what basements? On what snow-covered roads? Is he well? Alive?

Another person with a Russian passport, abandoned by the authorities and slandered by them.

True, we have many of them. One more, one less...

P. S. I just received a very disturbing message about Andrei Babitsky's fate. I don't want to believe it. I can't. They promised to call me in two days. I can imagine what those two days of waiting will be like.

I can't recall now what disturbing message I was waiting for then.

The case against Babitsky, as you all remember, ended in nothing, a fizzle...

I only remember that one day Henry Reznik, Babitsky's lawyer, called and asked if I—along with Sergei Yushenkov and Dima Muratov—could become Andrei's guarantor: so that he could go on a week's vacation during the long investigation?

We all, of course, agreed, went to the investigative unit, filled out various forms...

Well, and then the case, around which an entire political show was staged, was forgotten.

I remind you specifically, so that you don't forget.

Notebook Seven: Year 2001

That's how we live on campaigns
Under your dawns.
Cannot live a day without you,
Only don't betray me,
Motherland, don't betray me.
Motherland,
Do not betray.

This year I remember three events.

First. As I already mentioned, after the State Duma Security Committee delegation returned from Chechnya, we managed to secure funding for the 46th Internal Troops Brigade of the Russian MVD as a separate line item in the budget.

A year later, we found ourselves there again.

"There is nothing more alluring in life than returning to places you have already been, walking the same streets, stopping at a house you remember, recognizing in a crowd people with whom you once exchanged at least a word.

When you return, you feel life in its endless flow, and, honestly, you yourself stop doubting your own existence.

With Chechnya—it's a special story.

You return not to life—but to pain.

A year later, we found ourselves there again.

"There is nothing more alluring in life than returning to places you have already been, walking the same streets, stopping at a house you remember, recognizing in a crowd people with whom you once exchanged at least a word.

When you return, you feel life in its endless flow, and, honestly, you yourself stop doubting your own existence.

With Chechnya—it's a special story.

You return not to life—but to pain.

Exactly a year ago, in the same autumn, we, members of the State Duma's Security Committee, flew to the location of the 46th Internal Troops Brigade to see for ourselves how the President's Decree was being carried out. A decree important and fundamental: people whose military profession is meant to protect what they stand for must be permanently, eternally stationed in Chechnya."

I was in the exact same places.

And I can repeat the same thing I wrote before. More sorrow had been added to the eyes of the officers who had lost their friends and their soldiers over the past year.

The presidential decree, which stated that the military personnel stationed here would receive guarantees for a normal human life, has been annulled by the government. All benefits due to those who risk their lives not once a month, but every minute, turned out to be a simple child's deception.

For Pavel Borodin, several million dollars were instantly found, within twenty-four hours, to release him on bail.

These guys are hostages of a state that rewards them only posthumously.

I repeat, we became ashamed of what we saw again: communal tents where officers' families huddled, APCs long since scrapped, ancient radio sets, meager salaries.

I understand, it's no better for everyone else in Russia.

But here, it's war, here life can truly become a fleeting moment.

Oh, it would be great if not us, but people from the government, from the Ministry of Finance, saw all this.

Perhaps then they too would sign this document, alongside our deputies' signatures:

"For two winters, the brigade's personnel wintered in tent cities; now, in the military camp of Grozny's 'Severny' airport, 1200 servicemen are moving into barracks that have been built. But over 7000 servicemen in this camp and the other five deployment points remain in tents, and the construction of barracks and living quarters for them has not begun due to lack of funds. The program for the permanent deployment of the 46th brigade is planned until 2003; 5.4 billion rubles are needed for its implementation. The MVD has repeatedly appealed to the Government of the Russian Federation to grant the program state status, but has always been refused on various grounds. For 2000-2001, 0.98 billion rubles (18 percent) were allocated from the federal budget; for 2002, 410 million rubles are planned with a need for 1.44 billion rubles.

As of October 1, 2001, 945 families of officers, warrant officers, and contract servicemen in the brigade are on the housing waiting list... For 2002, funds for housing construction for the 46th brigade are not being allocated from the federal budget for this specific purpose.

We are forced to state that the Government of the Russian Federation does not fully understand the danger that this mistake could lead to.

The brigade is still understaffed with command personnel today, and if the housing problem for the families of servicemen who have honestly served for two years in extreme conditions in the Chechen Republic is not resolved, the problem of staffing the brigade will become insurmountable.

The 46th Brigade is an outpost in the fight against terrorism in the North Caucasian region. To strengthen its morale and combat readiness, the personnel must feel the care and support of the authorities."

Excuse me for quoting an official document.

But life is also somewhat official.

Only our people are of unofficial quality and unofficial resilience.

"Living conditions—good," reported the acting battalion commander in Gudermes.

He didn't want to complain.

He wasn't used to complaining.

Yes, he is proud that he insulated the tents, that he built his own bakery and bathhouse.

The only difference from last year