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.'"