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.