Mercenaries cut out the hearts of Russian soldiers. Russians! Don't leave, we need slaves! (testimony of the atrocities of the Chechens) How the Chechens mocked the captured Russians

They are among us

Everything I write is true. I want us not to forget these deeds. These are three stories about three hells on earth, on our earth. And told to me by people who have been there. GPAP 1 bus station, former closed torture prison. There were no people in this prison, animals worked there. Guys and girls, not just killed. And how painful it can be. A horizontal bar is a device on which people were suspended in various poses. Over time, the bones came out of the joints. Fly agaric, a soldering iron burned out the oral cavity. Rose, the tube is inserted into the (*sensored*) passage, then the barbed wire is inserted through the tube into the rectum. The tube is pulled out and the wire remains. The wire is then pulled out. The famous cross There, in one of the halls, hung a cross welded from rails. Prisoners were fastened to the cross with wire and shocked. A wolf grin, teeth were grinded down in the mouth with a large file. A vise clamped the head in a vise, and boiling resin dripped from above. And the famous womb. They dug a meter-high hole, squatted the prisoners in a row and poured concrete up to their necks. As the concrete dries, it compresses and breaks all the bones.

How did the interrogations go? Usually there were favorite options - a vacuum cleaner. A gas mask was put on his head and oxygen was cut off. And the suffocating prisoner began to be kicked. When he lost consciousness, he was injected with chemo, and everything started all over again. This went on for hours. Another option is birch. The prisoner was placed on a chair, having previously tied his hands behind his back. A noose was put on the head, which was tied over the head to the crossbar. They knocked out a chair, and the man suffocated while hanging in the gallows. Having lost consciousness, he was pumped out and hanged again.
There was a wall behind the building, people were shot there. Often they were placed against the wall, and 2-3 times they shot over the top. This is how they joked. Then they killed. Sometimes the chained wounded were given to be torn to pieces by dogs. This is GPAP1. Most of the executioners were narrow-eyed. This is not easy to say. They are the main characters of these stories.
I beg you, do not read these lines. Soak them up like water in your blood. This is not a fable, this is delirium in the night of a madman who has lost his mind. This is the suffering and anguish of those who remained there, and those few who survived. And they want to die rather than live, this stain and pain in the soul has settled in them forever. I want to ask before continuing. ..
This I would write on every wall of our city. It's a pity that not everyone can understand this. If I write about the Seagull Hotel. In the basement of which 48 people of refugees, littered with stoves, ate each other from hunger. Or about those who, passing by, heard screams from under the ground, and knocks. But he passed by. I am writing this and it will not forget us.

If there are buildings in your area that housed the military. That is empty at the moment. Please post the address. And the approximate location of the building. It's important for me. Tomorrow I will tell the story of other gates of hell in terrible.
My mother's cousin, personally knew the woman who went mad. And from what is in front of her eyes. In the basement of the house in which they were filled up, she had to eat human flesh. And her child died in her arms. After that, she threw herself at the children.

I spent a lot of time looking for people who have seen little of the world. And then, when they were taken out to be tortured. And getting them to tell what they had to go through was extremely difficult. Only one thing helped me, I can’t say that.

The other gate is a boarding school for the deaf and dumb for a minute. From 2000 to 2006, a closed prison (secret). While looking for one missing guy, I was informed that the military had moved out of this building. Now a little about this place. There were several buildings, one with a monkey house for excuses. But the second building and its cellars served as a death machine. The day before us, our memorial defenders arrived there.
Nah ets khumsh. They found documents and photographs of the prisoners in one of the offices. And how miserable cowards allowed the structures to seize them from themselves. Monkeys took a picture and went home. We arrived and they didn't let us in. At our own risk, we penetrated from the back side through another military. Part, the government gave a command to the workers who were there. Demolish buildings within a week. We had little time. Among the workers was a guy who helped us. Next, I will tell you what happened there.

I will continue. This place was the house of death, almost 400 people disappeared in it, even more. And its owners were those murderers from GPAP1. This is the Khanty-Mansiysk OMON, who called themselves SOM. Above the entrance to the basement where the prisoners were killed was written in large letters. HELP YOU DIE!
These were the last words that our brothers and sisters read before entering the cave! And on the building one could clearly see the inscription, WE PO..Y YOUR SORRY! There were several cells in the cellars. There was nothing in them, no windows, no light, only dirt, dampness and concrete. Men were kept in the 1st cell, all the walls were written in Arabic, and with names. Girls and women were kept in the second cell. I won't say what was on the walls. But many were written in blood, those who wrote them understood that they would die. I'M ALIVE? Diana. I CAN'T SEE ANYTHING, I DIED HERE Zareta 2001. ALLAH HELP, Malika 16 years old. There is a lot of grief on these walls, and they absorbed a lot of tears and blood. All these inscriptions and words, it's hard for me to speak. The next day when we arrived, someone set fire to the cameras with tires. And soot settled on the walls.

These girls were brutally raped every day. Above almost every bed of the killers, there were photos of these girls in the nude. There were also those who were killed by them as a memory. These photos were found by workers, but immediately burned. They also raped at the cells with men that they heard the screams of their sisters. Whoever tried to help was tortured. There was also a torture chamber right behind the wall from the prisoners. So that they hear the screams and crunch of bones, their brothers and sisters. In this cell, we noticed two thick boards, they were used in this way: a person was laid on one, and the other was covered. And from above they beat with a huge sledgehammer. To burst the insides. The walls in this cell were covered in paint multiple times, as there was blood everywhere. One man survived, they managed to cut off his ear. But even now he does not tell the whole truth, fear overcame him. Some girls were stolen and sold to this place, you bastards. The next day, a man called me there. What I saw shocked me, it was a nightmare.

The next day when we arrived, it turned out that the workers had found secret cameras. They were walled up. There was nothing in one. But there were rings in the walls. And the second passage to the second chamber was broken through before our eyes. We went there. What we saw there, I will remember for the rest of my life. Pregnant women and girls with babies were kept there. 3 iron beds, over each hangs a half-bent sheet of iron. Wired to the ceiling. Children were placed in them. The room is damp and dirty. No windows, no light. In the far corner stood a strange apparatus, and nearby the whole wall was covered in blood. As we found out, they chopped off fingers on it, burned it on a small stove that stood under it. and rubbed their hands against the wall. And this is all in the room where the girls with babies were kept. Most likely these children were born there. Neither they nor their mothers survived.

And the third place of death! It still functions today. From 2000 to today! If we combine the torture of GPAP1. And the cruelty of SOMA. There will not be even 10 percent of what is happening there. Even our president and any authority of our land are not allowed into this place. Only direct subordination to the Kremlin. Nobody returned from there. About small attacks. Secret base. Passing this place at night was a risk to the life of any driver. If they stop, I might not reach the house. One Nokhchi worked there, he told about this place before his death. Behind this part of the field, cells meter by meter are dug into the ground. In every cage there is a naked prisoner, in the open air. He is there almost always, he cannot lie down, stand up, sit down. All twisted up in a cage. This guy said that there were girls and boys, and very young ones. And there is not a single normal one, all who have lost their minds bark and howl at night. Overgrown, dirty, wild. This place is still there. And it instills fear in everyone, with its silence and stillness. For 200 meters people drink tea and relax. And there someone dies of suffering, even though they want to live this tea.

Revelations of the Russian occupier about the atrocities in Chechnya.
Both during the first and during the second war in Chechnya, I myself saw many deaths, I saw killed people. I saw many wounded and crippled children and adults. I saw grief, blood and tears.

And at that time, and now I heard a lot of stories about the atrocities perpetrated by the Russian military against civilians. Moreover, it is noteworthy that most of these crimes were committed by the so-called “contract soldiers”.

That is, military personnel who serve under the contract. Not 18-20-year-old youths, but rather adult men. Residents of Chechnya usually call them mercenaries. And this definition, in my opinion, fits them best. After all, these people go to war, they go to kill others for money. They want to build their happiness on the grief, blood and misfortune of others. Even the soldiers themselves, those who are called up for compulsory military service, as I understand it, do not respect and even hate such people.

During one of my trips to a conference in Moscow last summer, I met a former Russian soldier who served in Chechnya in 1999-2000. We were in the same compartment, got to know each other, talked, had lunch together. He drank a little, and somehow casually told me a story that shocked me to the core. I did not ask him to tell me about it, but for some reason he was drawn to revelations.

According to this former serviceman, let's call him Vladimir, it was in the winter of 2000, or rather at the end of January. The unit in which he served was sent for a “cleansing operation” in the area of ​​the village of Beryozka, which is located along the Staropromyslovsky highway in the city of Grozny. Among them were many contract soldiers, whom the conscripts called "double basses". And all of them, according to Vladimir, were almost always in a state of intoxication.

At that time, there were very few people in Grozny, because fierce battles for the city were still going on, and everyone who could, fled from there, leaving their homes and all their property.

In one of the houses, according to Vladimir, the servicemen stumbled upon a family of seven. Adult men and women, as well as young men and two young children, were immediately shot by the soldiers. Only a girl, 13-14 years old, was left alive, the only daughter of the murdered owners of the house.

The house was looted, as well as all the nearby households, abandoned by the owners, and then set on fire. The soldiers threw the girl into an armored personnel carrier and brought her to the place of their deployment, near the village of Zagryazhsky in the Staropromyslovsky district.

Vladimir said that for almost a week, the girl was raped by the officers of this unit. This happened every night, and often during the day. Having mocked the child enough, the commanders then handed her over to contract soldiers to be torn to pieces.

What these monsters did to her is indescribable. She was beaten and raped for several hours every day. And not only one by one, but also in groups of several people. The girl often lost consciousness, and she was brought to her senses by pouring cold water over her.

After several days of continuous bullying, she was practically half dead. The girl could die at any moment, and then they decided to use her, as one of the contractors said, “to use it for the last time for the benefit of the cause.”

As Vladimir said, a half-dead, naked child was hung up by the arms in one of the basements so that her legs barely touched the floor. Then a young guy who had been detained earlier was brought there. For several days, the unfortunate man was severely beaten and tortured, demanding to know where the weapons were hidden and to indicate the whereabouts of the militants. But he was stubbornly silent, despite the savage torture that was applied to him by brutal contract soldiers.

They burned his body with red-hot iron, stabbed and cut him with knives, beat him with clubs and heavy army boots, but the young man constantly insisted that he knew nothing and no one, since he had recently returned from Russia. Vladimir knew that neither this tiny girl nor the detained guy had any chance to get out of there alive.

According to the soldier, it was he who was ordered to bring the detainee to the premises where a group of contractors gathered and the girl was. On the way, he whispered to the detainee not to slander himself and warned that in any case he would not be released. The young man, barely standing on his feet, was taken into the room and placed in front of the crucified girl.

The contractors again demanded from him to tell where he had hidden the weapon, saying that otherwise they would "tackle" the girl. He continued to be silent. Then one of the contractors approached the hanging girl and cut off her chest with a knife. She screamed wildly in pain, and the young man literally died, and tried to turn away from this terrible sight.

But they began to beat him severely, demanding that he watch how the girl was dying “through his fault”. Then the same contractor cut off the child's second breast, and she lost consciousness. The guy began to ask the contractors to stop this fanaticism, and said that he accidentally saw how one of the local residents hid a machine gun in a drainpipe, and named the place. This terribly amused the contractors.

Saying, “well, now we don’t need either her or you,” they began to finish off the already half-dead girl. First, her legs were cut off with an ax for chopping meat, then her hands were cut off, and when the bloodied stump fell to the floor, her head was cut off.

Pieces of the body were thrown into a huge bag, after which the detainee was taken outside. They took him to a wasteland, tied him to a box of TNT, placed the remains of the girl on top and blew them both up. A dead child and a young man still alive.

Vladimir himself wept when he told me this. He said that the “double basses” constantly mocked people, killed everyone without any pity, regardless of gender, age and even nationality. That even conscripts often became targets for mockery by contractors. Vladimir got off the train somewhere in Voronezh. I never met him again. True, he left me his phone number and took mine, but we never called each other. And why?

The story told by this former soldier of the Russian army is probably the most terrible thing I have heard in all these years. Although I repeat once again, I have heard and seen a lot. Unfortunately, I do not know either the names or surnames of this girl and guy.

Probably, their relatives, if not close, then distant, are still searching, hoping that perhaps someday they will return home, and do not even imagine how painful and terrible their death was. They don't even have graves. They were simply blown to pieces by the explosion and that's it. And this was done by the military, who came here to “liberate” us from “international terrorists”.

I read somewhere this expression: "Who killed - will be killed, who killed by order - will be killed, who gave the order to kill - will be killed." And I very much hope that the fiends in military uniform, who brutally dealt with unarmed people, women, children, the elderly, will sooner or later be duly punished. And if not in this world, then at least in that world they will answer to the Almighty for their deeds.

Aslanbek Apaev

Aldy village. March 2000
Finding no protection in the Russian courts, the victims of the armed conflict in the North Caucasus appeal to the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights. By November 2000, the court accepted for consideration and registered 16 complaints prepared with the assistance of the Memorial Human Rights Center; six of them are already under consideration in court.

Since the spring of 2000, the Memorial Human Rights Center has been assisting victims of the armed conflict in Chechnya in filing complaints with the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights. Six complaints began in the summer, all related to killings or attempted killings of civilians. They are united in three cases, in three episodes.

1. Bombardment of a column of refugees on the Rostov-Baku highway on October 29, 1999. The exit of refugees from Chechnya to Ingushetia was blocked by federal troops on October 23. On 29, according to the statements of the federal command, the opening of the Kavkaz-1 checkpoint was scheduled. On this day, on the highway, a column of people and cars waiting for a pass stretched for 15 kilometers. It was announced that the checkpoint would not be opened, but when the vehicles with refugees moved deep into Chechnya, they were attacked from the air by Russian attack aircraft. Among the destroyed cars, two belonged to the Red Cross, several dozen people died.

2. Murders of residents of the Staropromyslovsky district of Grozny during its “cleansing” in January 2000. Bombing and shelling of the city began in September 1999, it was blocked by federal forces in early December. Safe corridors for leaving Grozny were not provided, and tens of thousands of people did not dare to leave it under shelling. The Staropromyslovsky district, stretching along the highway for tens of kilometers, was the first to be taken under control by Russian military personnel. During several weeks of January, dozens of residents who remained in their homes were killed by the military there.

Several people survived after the execution and were able to tell about what happened.

3. The death of residents of the village of Katyr-Yurt February 4, 2000 In late January - early February 2000, the federal command carried out a "special operation", luring the Chechen detachments defending Grozny from the city to the plain.

Detachments of militants were deliberately allowed into the villages, previously declared by the federal side as "security zones", after which their destruction began with the use of aviation and artillery. "Corridors" for the exit of civilians from the villages were not organized, as a result, more than one and a half hundred people died in the village of Katyr-Yurt.

These cases have undergone preliminary consideration, and relevant requests have been sent to the Russian government. The Russian side has provided its explanations on these requests, and the cases are to be considered on the merits. The armed conflict in Chechnya has been going on for more than a year. During this time, thousands of civilians of different nationalities died during the bombing, shelling and "cleansing", were illegally detained, beaten, tortured in the "filtration" system. According to the official statement of the Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation for the observance of human and civil rights in the Chechen Republic, more than four thousand people turned to him with complaints about serious crimes against the person committed by employees of the Russian law enforcement agencies, for which criminal cases were to be initiated. Meanwhile, to date, the Russian prosecutor's office has initiated less than twenty such cases against military personnel and employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In addition, there are no courts in Chechnya to which citizens could apply with their complaints.

Meanwhile, since 1996, after Russia joined the Council of Europe, its citizens can apply to the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights. Human rights are not an internal affair of states. In addition, when joining the Council of Europe, Russia voluntarily gave up part of its sovereignty, recognizing the jurisdiction of the Strasbourg Court.

But it is common knowledge that for such an appeal it is necessary to exhaust all national remedies - from the district to the supreme court.

However, if national remedies are not available or are ineffective, the complaint may be taken directly. The precedent for such treatment was given in the cases of Turkish Kurds. The Human Rights Center "Memorial" intends to further assist the victims of armed conflicts in the judicial protection of their legal rights.

STATEMENT OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS CENTER "MEMORIAL"
On October 12, 2000, in Grozny, as a result of a car explosion near the building of the Oktyabrsky District Department of the Interior, seventeen people were killed and sixteen were injured. Both among the dead and among the wounded, many are civilians in Grozny who came to the internal affairs bodies to issue passports or for other everyday reasons. From the very beginning of the current armed conflict on the territory of the Chechen Republic, civilians have been suffering from both warring parties, which in their actions do not want to take into account the security of civilians. Both international organizations (such as the UN, the OSCE, the Council of Europe) and the majority of non-governmental human rights organizations, quite rightly holding the federal side responsible for the mass death of the civilian population in Chechnya, have always talked about violations of humanitarian law by Chechen armed groups. At the beginning of the war, when large-scale hostilities were underway, Chechen armed groups opposing federal forces often located their positions near civilian objects and within settlements. This created an obvious threat to the lives of civilians. When Russian troops occupied the settlements of Chechnya and a guerrilla war began, civilians began to die from fire during attacks on checkpoints and places of deployment of federal forces, during mine explosions on the roads. However, the terrorist act committed on October 12 cannot be considered among other episodes of the guerrilla war. The place and time of this explosion deliberately endangered civilians. One of two things: either its organizers are completely indifferent to the lives of civilians, or in this way they deliberately intimidate everyone who comes into any contact with federal structures. In both cases, the organizers and perpetrators of the explosion are cynical criminals. History shows that partisan movements often turn to indiscriminate terror and outright banditry. If the armed formations opposing the federal forces in Chechnya have chosen this path, then their moral defeat is obvious.

Memorial: "humanitarian corridor" with mass graves.
The human rights community Memorial now on July 3 circulated the results of an investigation conducted by community workers in Chechnya in 2000 into the execution of a column of refugees inside a humanitarian corridor. As REGNUM reported earlier, Nurdi Nukhadzhiev, a lawyer for the President of Chechnya on human rights, informed about the discovery of 2 mass graves in Chechnya. In the first of them, about 800 bodies are supposedly buried, in the second - about 30. Below is the story of the appearance of the second burial, compiled by the Memorial community based on the testimony of witnesses. On October 29, 1999, a convoy of cars with refugees left the town of Argun in a northerly direction. People wanted to leave the areas where battles could soon unfold, and which by this time had already been subjected to periodic bombing and missile attacks. Over the past weeks, Russian troops, having taken control of the northern - Nadterechny, Naursky and Shchelkovo - regions of Chechnya, slowly moved south to Surovoy. On October 26, Russian money of mass information spread the message that from October 29 “humanitarian corridors” would be opened for the departure of civilians from Chechnya either to Ingushetia or to the northern regions of the Chechen Republic.

It seemed to almost all the refugees that it was most desirable to taxi to the northern regions, already occupied by Russian troops. On October 29, at about 9 am, the column of refugees passed through the village of Petropavlovskoye and set off along the highway towards the village of Goryacheistochnenskaya, adjacent to the regional center - the large village of Tolstoy-Yurt. On the outskirts of these 2 populated points, positions of Russian troops were already located. When the convoy of cars approached Goryacheistochnenskaya, an artillery strike was launched on it without warning. The fire, apparently, was fired from the artillery positions of the federal troops located on the heights near the village of Vinogradovoe, to the northeast of Goryacheistonenskaya. For 4 hours, the combatants did not let the columns of local residents to the place of shelling, who wanted to help people in misfortune. Only later, as far as the head of the administration of the village of Goryacheistochnenskaya could agree with the combatants, a truck with young people from the village of Tolstoy-Yurt left to help the victims, who were able to take out the wounded and part of the bodies of the dead. However, a group of 5 frightened kids, driven by a seventeen-year-old man, for another 5 days, without a havka and warm clothes, she hid from shelling in the mounds.

Only on November 3 did they get to the village of Goryacheistochnenskaya, where they were given first aid. As a result of the shelling, at least 20 3 refugees died, seven more people later died from wounds in the clinic. Among the dead were at least 5 babies. Several 10 people were injured. It is likely that the dead were larger. Definitely to establish their number is not certain. Some of the dead were buried by local residents in the cemetery of the village of Tolstoy-Yurt, some of the bodies were taken by relatives for burial in other populated areas of Chechnya.

Those organisms that could not be removed from the crash site immediately were buried by combatants along with separated cars. June 2 and 3, 2000 only.

Human rights violations in Chechnya by the Russian military
Violations of human rights in Chechnya by the Russian military - murders, abductions, beatings and torture of the population of Chechnya by Russian security forces. Some of the crimes committed by the federal troops were investigated by the European Court of Human Rights, after which Russia paid large compensations to the victims. The majority of human rights violations in Russian courts have not been considered or the defendants have been given lenient sentences.

In January 2000, in the Staropromyslovsky district of Chechnya, the Russian military attacked civilians for profit: they shot women to make it easier to remove their earrings, and people with Slavic appearance were also shot.

There is information that in the spring or summer of 2000, representatives of Russian law enforcement agencies executed an unknown number of captured militants. We are talking about a small group that participated in the battle with the sergeant of the Kursk OMON Andrei Khmelevsky (posthumously awarded the title of Hero of Russia). According to one of the Kursk riot police, “Soon this gang was caught. Too bad we didn't have time to ask. The brothers detained them. They identified the identities and immediately destroyed everyone. ”

Massacre in Novye Aldy

On February 5, 2000, 56 civilians were shot by the Russian military in the village of Novye Aldy and adjacent areas of the city of Grozny. Most of the inhabitants killed by the punishers were Chechens, and some of them were Russians. The Russian side did not admit its guilt in what happened, but did not deny that on that day in Novye Aldy, the St. Petersburg OMON carried out a “special operation.” Nevertheless, Russia lost all processes in this case before the European Court of Human Rights. The Russian riot police acted with extreme cruelty, shooting children, women and the elderly, and then burning people still alive with a flamethrower. Witnesses also reported rapes of civilians and beheadings (49-year-old Sultan Temirov, according to witnesses, had his head cut off alive and his body thrown to dogs). OMON first demanded gold and money from the residents, then the residents were shot, and the Russian military pulled out gold teeth from some corpses.

On March 2, 2002, four young Chechens were killed. According to human rights activist Libkhan Bazaeva, the young people were building a greenhouse when soldiers approached them and took them away to check their documents. Two days later, Russian channels announced a shootout between these people and soldiers, as a result of which the terrorists were allegedly killed. The bodies of the killed guys were stabbed with a knife, their hands were tied behind their backs, one had a badly damaged ear. Bazaeva claims that “This crime will go unpunished, no one will look for the guilty Russian soldiers. Such crimes are in the order of things. The corruption in the army has reached its limit, the trade in corpses, rapes are becoming more and more frequent, and the rapes of men - the "new practice" - are occurring in abundance. “The military tell us bluntly that they will kill all our husbands and make us their wives so that we will give birth to Russian children.”

On January 13, 2005, federal forces in the village of Zumsoy, Itum-Kalinsky District, carried out a cleansing operation: they robbed local residents and carried out pogroms. After the cleansing was completed, four local residents were loaded onto helicopters: Vakha and Atabi Mukhaev (16-year-old), father and son, as well as Shakhran Nasipov and Magomed-Emin Ibishev. After that, no one saw them. The military claimed that all four went to the mountains to fight against the bandits, although it was the Russian military who took them away that day. Then, in the same winter, federal troops once again came to the village: they destroyed the school, desecrated the mosque, slaughtered the cattle, saying that they would not let people live there, otherwise militants might be hiding there. On July 4, the head of the village administration, Abdul-Azim Yangulbaev, was shot by masked men who spoke fluent Russian in front of witnesses. He demanded that the authorities return the stolen civilians. The surviving Mehdi and Salakh Mukhtaevs sent a complaint to the Strasbourg court, and in the fall, an official request from Strasbourg came to the Russian government. On the night of December 29-30, they also came for Mekhti Mukhtaev: in his underwear and barefoot, he was taken away by people in camouflage uniforms and masks who spoke Chechen in SIZO No. 1 in the city of Grozny. He was tortured for several weeks, threatened with the death of his relatives. Then, according to the testimony of a badly beaten prisoner, who, when giving evidence, could not even stand on his feet, he was accused of banditry. Later, your testifier against him admitted that he was forced to give false testimony under torture. According to Anna Politkovskaya, who investigated the case, the investigators wanted to prove to Strasbourg that the applicant was a separatist, and that is why he went to court with a complaint against the Russian authorities.

Abductions and torture by Kadyrov's close associates

In 2005, Human Rights Watch stated that the "vast majority" of kidnappings over the past two years were committed by Kadyrov's men. According to Ayut Titiev, a representative of Memorial in Gudermes, Kadyrov himself tortured one of his opponents with a blowtorch, another person was hung up for 36 hours and beaten with iron rods. To intimidate the inhabitants of the village of Tsotsin-Yurt, Kadyrov ordered the severed head of one of the rebels to be impaled.

Trials against Russia and the Russian military

In most cases, cases against the Russian military were either not considered by Russian courts or very light sentences were handed down. As noted in May 2008 by the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Chechen Republic N. Nukhazhiev, “1873 criminal cases initiated on the facts of kidnapping remain unsolved and suspended for failure to identify the persons involved in the crimes. All these criminal cases are being processed by the territorial civil prosecutor's offices, and given that the suspects in their commission are military personnel, all these cases are practically doomed to be suspended.

However, a number of processes caused a serious public outcry. Many residents of Chechnya were eventually forced to apply to the European Court of Human Rights.

* One of the most high-profile cases was the case of Budanov. This case was accompanied by strong pressure from the military. As a result, Budanov was charged with the murder of a young woman (rape was not taken into account by the court). After Budanov was convicted, he was amnestied, but after the indignation of the human rights community and a number of politicians, the criminal was again forced to return to prison.

* Another high-profile trial against the Russian military was the trial of Arakcheev and Khudyakov. Arakcheev was suspected of killing 3 workers in Chechnya. As a result, both suspects were released on bail.

* Another well-known case was the Ulman case. Ulman was found guilty of murder, abuse of power and deliberate destruction of property and sentenced to 14 years in prison to be served in a strict regime colony. Lieutenant Alexander Kalagansky was sentenced to 11 years, and warrant officer Vladimir Voevodin was sentenced to 12 years.

* An officer of the Nizhnevartovsk police department, Sergey Lapin, was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2005 on charges of intentionally causing grievous bodily harm under aggravating circumstances, abuse of power under aggravating circumstances, and official forgery (in connection with the disappearance in January 2001 of Zelimkhan Murdalov ). In 2007, his case was sent by the Supreme Court for a new trial.

Excerpts from the testimonies of forced migrants who fled from Chechnya in the period from 1991-1995.
The vocabulary of the authors has been preserved. Some names have been changed. (Chechnya.ru)

A. Kochedykova, lived in Grozny:
“I left the city of Grozny in February 1993 due to constant threats of action from armed Chechens and non-payment of pensions and wages. I left the apartment with all the furnishings, two cars, a cooperative garage and left with my husband.
In February 1993, Chechens killed my neighbor, born in 1966, on the street. They hit her head, broke her ribs, and raped her.
A war veteran Elena Ivanovna was also killed from an apartment nearby.
In 1993, it became impossible to live there, they were killed all around. Cars were blown up right with people. Russians were fired from work for no reason.
A man born in 1935 was killed in the apartment. Nine stab wounds were inflicted on him, his daughter was raped and killed right there in the kitchen.

B. Efankin, lived in Grozny:
“In May 1993, in my garage, two Chechen guys armed with a machine gun and a pistol attacked me and tried to take possession of my car, but they couldn’t, because it was being repaired. They shot over my head.
In the autumn of 1993, a group of armed Chechens brutally killed my friend Bolgarsky, who refused to voluntarily give up his Volga car. Such cases were widespread. For this reason, I left Grozny."

D. Gakyryany, lived in Grozny:
"In November 1994, Chechen neighbors threatened to kill with a gun, and then kicked out of the apartment and settled in it themselves."

P. Kuskova, lived in Grozny:
"On July 1, 1994, four teenagers of Chechen nationality broke my arm and raped me, in the area of ​​the Red Hammer plant, when I was returning home from work."

E. Dapkylinets, lived in Grozny:
"On December 6 and 7, 1994, he was severely beaten for refusing to participate in Dydayev's militia as part of Ukrainian militants in the village of Chechen-Aul."

E. Barsykova, lived in Grozny:
“In the summer of 1994, from the window of my apartment in Grozny, I saw how armed people of Chechen nationality approached the garage belonging to the neighbor Mkptchan H., one of them shot Mkrtchan H. in the leg, and then they took his car and left.”

G. Tarasova, lived in Grozny:
"On May 6, 1993, my husband went missing in the city of Grozny. A.F. Tarasov. I suppose that the Chechens forcibly took him to the mountains to work, because he is a welder."

E. Khobova, lived in Grozny:
"On December 31, 1994, my husband, Pogodin, and brother, Eremin A., were killed by a Chechen sniper at the moment when they were cleaning up the corpses of Russian soldiers in the street."

H. Trofimova, lived in Grozny:
“In September 1994, Chechens broke into the apartment of my sister, Vishnyakova O.N., raped her in front of the children, beat her son and took her 12-year-old daughter Lena with them. So she never returned.
Since 1993, my son has been repeatedly beaten and robbed by Chechens."

V. Ageeva, lived in Art. Petropavlovskaya, Grozny district:
"On January 11, 1995, in the village on the square, Dydayev's militants shot Russian soldiers."

M. Khrapova, lived in the city of Gudermes:
"In August 1992, our neighbor, R. S. Sargsyan, and his wife, Z. S. Sarkisyan, were tortured and burned alive."

V. Kobzarev, lived in the Grozny region:
"On November 7, 1991, three Chechens fired on my dacha with machine guns, miraculously I survived.
In September 1992, armed Chechens demanded to vacate the apartment, threw a grenade. And I, fearing for my life and the lives of my relatives, had to leave Chechnya with my family."

T. Aleksandrova, lived in Grozny:
"My daughter was returning home in the evening. The Chechens dragged her into a car, beat her, cut her and raped her. We had to leave Grozny."

T. Vdovchenko, lived in Grozny:
“A neighbor in the stairwell, a KGB officer V. Tolstenok, was pulled out of his apartment early in the morning by armed Chechens and a few days later his mutilated corpse was discovered. I personally did not see these events, but O.K. told me about this (address K. not specified, the event took place in Grozny in 1991)".

V. Nazarenko, lived in Grozny:
“He lived in the city of Grozny until November 1992. Dydayev condoned the fact that crimes were openly committed against the Russians, and for this no one from the Chechens was punished.
The rector of Grozny University suddenly disappeared, and after some time his corpse was accidentally found buried in the forest. They did this to him because he did not want to vacate his position."

O. Shepetilo, born in 1961:
"I lived in Grozny until the end of April 1994. I worked in the Kalinovskaya station of the Nayp district as the director of a music school. At the end of 1993, I was returning from work from the Kalinovskaya station to Grozny. There was no bus, and I went a Zhiguli car drove up to me, a Chechen with a Kalashnikov assault rifle got out of it and, threatening to kill me, pushed me into the car, took me to the field, there mocked me for a long time, raped and beat me.

Y. Yunysova:
"Son Zair was taken hostage in June 1993 and held for 3 weeks, released after paying 1.5 million rubles .."

M. Portnykh:
"In the spring of 1992, in the city of Grozny, on Dyakova Street, a wine and vodka shop was completely looted. A live grenade was thrown into the apartment of the head of this store, as a result of which her husband died, and her leg was amputated."

I. Chekylina, born in 1949:
“I left Grozny in March 1993. My son was robbed 5 times, all his outer clothes were taken off him. On the way to the institute, the Chechens severely beat my son, broke his head, threatened with a knife.
I was personally beaten and raped just because I am Russian.
The dean of the faculty of the institute where my son studied was killed.
Before our departure, my son's friend, Maxim, was killed."

V. Minkoeva, born in 1978:
“In 1992, in the city of Grozny, an attack was made on a neighboring school. Children (seventh grade) were taken hostage and held for a day. The entire class and three teachers were gang-raped.
In 1993 my classmate M. was kidnapped.
In the summer of 1993, on the platform of the railway. station in front of my eyes a man was shot by Chechens.

V. Komarova:
“In Grozny, I worked as a nurse in the children's polyclinic No. 1. Totikova worked for us, Chechen fighters came to her and shot the whole family at home.
All life was in fear. Once Dydayev with his militants ran into the clinic, where we were pressed against the walls. So he walked around the clinic and shouted that there was a Russian genocide, because our building used to belong to the KGB.
I was not paid my salary for 7 months, and in April 1993 I left.”

Y. Pletneva, born in 1970:
“In the summer of 1994, at 1 pm, I witnessed the execution on Khrushchev Square of 2 Chechens, 1 Russian and 1 Korean. The shooting was carried out by four Dydayev guards, who brought victims in foreign cars.
At the beginning of 1994, a Chechen was playing with a grenade on Khrushchev Square. The check jumped off, the player and several other people who were nearby were injured.
There were many weapons in the city, almost every inhabitant of Grozny was a Chechen.
The Chechen neighbor got drunk, made noise, threatened with perverted rape and murder."

A. Fedyushkin, born in 1945:
"In 1992, unknown persons armed with a pistol took away the car from my godfather, who lives in the village of Chervlennaya.
In 1992 or 1993, two Chechens, armed with a pistol and a knife, tied up his wife (b. 1949) and eldest daughter (b. 1973), committed violent acts against them, took away the TV set, gas stove and disappeared. The attackers were wearing masks.
In 1992 in art. Scarlet my mother was robbed by some men, taking away the icon and the cross, causing bodily harm.
Brother's neighbor, who lived in St. Chervlennaya left the village in his car VAZ-2121 and disappeared. The car was found in the mountains, and 3 months later he was found in the river."

V. Doronina:
“At the end of August 1992, the granddaughter was taken away in a car, but was soon released.
In Art. In Nizhnedeviyk (Assinovka), armed Chechens raped all the girls and teachers in the orphanage.
Neighbor Yunys threatened my son with murder and demanded that he sell the house to him.
At the end of 1991, armed Chechens broke into my relative's house, demanded money, threatened to kill, and killed my son."

S. Akinshin (born 1961):
“On August 25, 1992, at about 12 o’clock, 4 Chechens entered the territory of a summer cottage in Grozny and demanded that my wife, who was there, have sexual intercourse with them. When my wife refused, one of them hit her in the face with brass knuckles, causing bodily injuries. ..".

R. Akinshina (born 1960):
"August 25, 1992, at about 12 o'clock at a dacha near the 3rd city hospital in Grozny, four Chechens aged 15-16 demanded to have sexual intercourse with them. I was indignant. Then one of the Chechens hit me with brass knuckles and I was raped, taking advantage of my helpless state. After that, under the threat of murder, I was forced to have sexual intercourse with my dog."

H. Lobenko:
"In the entrance of my house, persons of Chechen nationality shot 1 Armenian and 1 Russian. The Russian was killed for standing up for an Armenian."

T. Zabrodina:
“There was a case when my bag was torn out.
In March-April 1994, a drunken Chechen came into the boarding school where my daughter Natasha worked, beat his daughter, raped her and then tried to kill her. The daughter managed to escape.
I witnessed how the neighbor's house was robbed. At this time, the residents were in a bomb shelter.

O. Kalchenko:
“My employee, a 22-year-old girl, was raped and shot by Chechens in the street near our work in front of my eyes.
I myself was robbed by two Chechens, under the threat of a knife they took away the last money.

V. Karagedin:
"They killed their son on 01/08/95, earlier the Chechens killed their youngest son on 01/04/94."

E. Dziuba:
"Everyone was forced to take citizenship of the Chechen Republic, if you don't, you won't get food stamps."

A. Abidzhalieva:
"They left on January 13, 1995, because the Chechens demanded that the Nogais protect them from Russian troops. They took the cattle. They beat my brother for refusing to join the troops."

O. Borichevsky, lived in Grozny:
"In April 1993, the apartment was attacked by Chechens dressed in riot police uniforms. They robbed and took away all valuables."

H. Kolesnikova, born in 1969, lived in Gudermes:
“On December 2, 1993, at the stop “plot 36” of the Staropromyslovsky (Staropromyslovsky) district of Grozny, 5 Chechens took me by the hands, took me to the garage, beat me, raped me, and then drove me around the apartments, where they raped me and injected drugs. They released me only on December 5 ".

E. Kyrbanova, O. Kyrbanova, L. Kyrbanov, lived in Grozny:
"Our neighbors - the T. family (mother, father, son and daughter) were found at home with signs of violent death."

T. Fefelova, lived in Grozny:
"A 12-year-old girl was stolen from neighbors (in Grozny), then they planted photographs (where she was abused and raped) and demanded a ransom."

3. Sanieva:
"During the fighting in Grozny, I saw female snipers among Dydayev's fighters."

L. Davydova:
“In August 1994, three Chechens entered the house of the K. family (Gydermes). Myzha was pushed under the bed, and a 47-year-old woman was brutally raped (also using various objects). A week later, K. died.
On the night of December 30-31, 1994, my kitchen was set on fire.”

T. Lisitskaya:
“I lived in the city of Grozny near the railway station, every day I watched trains being robbed.
On the night of the new year, 1995, Chechens came to me and demanded money for weapons and ammunition."

T. Sykhorykova:
“In early April 1993, a theft was committed from our apartment (Grozny).
At the end of April 1993, a VAZ-2109 car was stolen from us.
May 10, 1994 my husband Bagdasaryan G.3. was killed in the street by machine gun shots.

Ya. Rudinskaya, born in 1971:
“In 1993, Chechens armed with machine guns committed a robbery attack on my apartment (Novomaryevskaya station). Valuable things were taken out, my mother and I were raped, tortured with a knife, causing bodily injuries.
In the spring of 1993, my mother-in-law and father-in-law were beaten on the street (Grozny).

V. Bochkarev:
"The Dydayevites took hostage the director of the school in the village of Kalinovskaya Belyaev V., his deputy Plotnikov V.I., the chairman of the Kalinovsky collective farm Erin. They demanded a ransom of 12 million rubles ... Having not received the ransom, they killed the hostages."

Ya. Nefedova:
"On January 13, 1991, my husband and I were subjected to a robbery attack by Chechens in my apartment (Grozny) - they took away all valuable things, right down to the earrings from my ears."

V. Malashin, born in 1963:
“On January 9, 1995, three armed Chechens broke into the apartment of T. (Grozny), where my wife and I came to visit, robbed us, and two raped my wife, T., and E., who was in the apartment (1979 . R.)".

Yu. Usachev, F. Usachev:
"On December 18-20, 1994, we were beaten by the Dudayevites for not fighting on their side."

E. Kalganova:
"My neighbors - Armenians were attacked by Chechens, their 15-year-old daughter was raped.
In 1993, the family of Prokhorova P.E. was subjected to robbery.

A. Plotnikova:
“In the winter of 1992, the Chechens took away the warrants for apartments from me and my neighbors and, threatening with machine guns, ordered to move out. I left an apartment, a garage, a summer house in the city of Grozny.
My son and daughter were witnesses to the murder of neighbor B. by Chechens - he was shot from a machine gun.

V. Makharin, born in 1959:
"On November 19, 1994, Chechens committed a robbery attack on my family. Threatening with a machine gun, they threw my wife and children out of the car. They beat everyone with their feet, broke their ribs. They raped my wife. They took away the GAZ-24 car, property."

M. Vasilyeva:
"In September 1994, two Chechen fighters raped my 19-year-old daughter."

A. Fedorov:
"In 1993, the Chechens robbed my apartment.
In 1994 my car was stolen. Appealed to the police. When he saw his car, in which there were armed Chechens, he also reported this to the police. I was told to forget about the car. The Chechens threatened me and told me to leave Chechnya."

N. Kovpizhkin:
"In October 1992, Dydayev announced the mobilization of militants aged 15 to 50.
While working on the railway, Russians, including me, were guarded by Chechens as prisoners.
At the Gydermes station, I saw how the Chechens shot a man I did not know from machine guns. The Chechens said that they had killed a blood lover."

A. Bypmypzaev:
"On November 26, 1994, I was an eyewitness to how Chechen fighters burned 6 opposition tanks along with their crews."

M. Panteleeva:
"In 1991, Dydayev's militants stormed the building of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Chechen Republic, killing police officers, some colonel, and wounding a police major.
In the city of Grozny, the rector of an oil institute was kidnapped, the vice-rector was killed.
Armed militants broke into my parents' apartment - three in masks. One - in a police uniform, under the threat of weapons and torture with a hot iron, they took away 750 thousand rubles .., stole a car.

E. Dydina, born in 1954:
“In the summer of 1994, Chechens beat me up on the street for no reason. They beat me, my son and husband. They took off my son’s watch.
One woman I knew told me that when she was traveling to Krasnodar in 1993, the train was stopped, armed Chechens entered and took away money and valuables. In the vestibule they raped and threw out of the car (already at full speed) a young girl.

I. Udalova:
"On August 2, 1994, at night, two Chechens broke into my house (Gydermes), my mother cut her neck, we managed to fight back, I recognized a schoolmate in one of the attackers. I filed a complaint with the police, after which they began to persecute me, threaten my life son. I sent my relatives to the Stavropol Territory, then left on my own. My persecutors blew up my house on November 21, 1994."

V. Fedorova:
"In mid-April 1993, my friend's daughter was dragged into a car (Grozny) and taken away. Some time later she was found murdered, she was raped.
My friend at home, whom a Chechen tried to rape at a party, was caught by the Chechens on the way home the same evening and raped her all night.
On May 15-17, 1993, two young Chechens tried to rape me in the entrance of my house. Repulsed neighbor on the entrance, an elderly Chechen.
In September 1993, when I was driving to the station with a friend, my friend was dragged out of the car, kicked, and then one of the attacking Chechens kicked me in the face."

S. Grigoryants:
"During the reign of Dydaev, aunt Sarkis's husband was killed, the car was taken away, then my grandmother's sister and her granddaughter disappeared."

H. Zyuzina:
“On August 7, 1994, a work colleague Sh. Yu. Sh.'s body was found in the area of ​​the chemical plant."

M. Olev:
“In October 1993, our employee A.S. (1955, a train sender) was raped at about 18 hours right at the station and several people were beaten. At the same time, a dispatcher named Sveta (b. 1964) was raped. The police talked to Chechen-style criminals and let them go."

V. Rozvanov:
"Three times the Chechens tried to steal Vika's daughter, twice she ran away, and the third time she was rescued.
Son Sasha was robbed and beaten.
In September 1993, they robbed me, took off my watch and hat.
In December 1994, 3 Chechens searched the apartment, smashed the TV set, ate, drank and left."

A. Vitkov:
“In 1992, T.V., born in 1960, a mother of three young children, was raped and shot dead.
They tortured neighbors, an elderly husband and wife, because the children sent things (container) to Russia. The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Chechnya refused to look for criminals."

B. Yaposhenko:
"Repeatedly during 1992, Chechens in Grozny beat me up, robbed my apartment, smashed my car for refusing to take part in hostilities with the opposition on the side of the Dydayevites."

V. Osipova:
“I left because of harassment. I worked at a factory in Grozny. In 1991, armed Chechens arrived at the factory and forcibly expelled Russians to the elections. Then unbearable conditions were created for the Russians, general robberies began, garages were blown up and cars were taken away.
In May 1994, the son, Osipov V.E., was leaving Grozny, armed Chechens did not allow him to load things. Then it happened to me too, all things were declared "property of the republic."

K. Deniskina:
"I was forced to leave in October 1994 due to the situation: constant shooting, armed robberies, murders.
On November 22, 1992, Khusein Dydaev tried to rape my daughter, beat me, threatened to kill me."

A. Rodionova:
“In the beginning of 1993 in Grozny they destroyed weapons warehouses, armed themselves. It got to the point that children went to school with weapons. Institutions and schools were closed.
In mid-March 1993, three armed Chechens broke into the apartment of their Armenian neighbors and took away valuables.
She was an eyewitness in October 1993 to the murder of a young guy who had his stomach ripped open right in the afternoon.

H. Berezina:
"We lived in the village of Assinovsky. My son was constantly beaten at school, he was forced not to go there. At his husband's work (local state farm), Russians were removed from leadership positions."

L. Gostinina:
“In August 1993 in Grozny, when I was walking down the street with my daughter, in broad daylight a Chechen grabbed my daughter (b. 1980), hit me, dragged her into his car and took her away. Two hours later she returned home, said that she was raped.
Russians were humiliated in every way. In particular, in Grozny, near the Press House, there was a poster: "Russians, don't leave, we need slaves."

Military operations in Chechnya 1994-1996 (as in the second campaign of 1999-2000) were exceptionally brutal. There is a wealth of material on how the federal troops acted from the very first days of the war. It was collected mainly by the Russian human rights organizations Glasnost and Me-

moral”11. There is reliable evidence that the belligerents and civilians suffered the main victims in the initial period of the war. Numerous cases are well known when, in conditions of fierce fighting in Grozny and other places, the dead and even the wounded were not taken out. The theme of abandoned corpses has become one of the main ones in military stories. She was overgrown with monstrous rumors, in which people believed and told each other after the war.
“I have seen a lot of things. The price of a man in a war is negligible. During the war, corpses lay in piles on the streets, and the Russians did not allow us to bury them. At the beginning of the war, the Russian dead were not counted, or rather, there was no accounting of the dead at all. Then they began to count, but not in terms of individuals, but in terms of quantity. Say, in a battalion of 100 people, half died, so the battalion commander will report 50 corpses and present them. Otherwise, they will be demoted, or even imprisoned. If there are not enough corpses, they are looking for the missing ones everywhere, even underground. Just to be fresher. And then they will pick ours. They mutilate the head so that they would not be identified and hand it over according to the act as the corpse of a Russian soldier. This is where the confusion comes from, and people in Russia bury, not knowing whom themselves” (Visit M.).
Another popular version was the story of how Russian soldiers killed each other, including for monetary rewards. Among Chechens, some even believed that it was in this mutual destruction that more people were killed than from Chechen weapons.
“I'll tell you, but you won't believe that the Russians beat Russians more than the Chechens. I didn't believe it myself until I saw it with my own eyes. Promise
contractors get a big score if they take the road or the village. They are happy to try foolishly. The militants will retreat from the village or, say, from the motor depot, contract soldiers will fill up there in anticipation of the jackpot. And then aircraft or helicopters fly in, and only dust remains from the contractors. Again, the benefit - someone does not need to pay, but the money was written off anyway. Go and ask the dead if they were given money or not.
And then, it used to be, just fees or exercises would be announced or another opportunity. Helicopters will fly in - and there is no one. So it was in the pioneer camps near the village of Chishki. I'm not talking about how Russian soldiers were beaten at checkpoints by the Russians themselves from helicopters. It seems to be trifles. At first, no count was kept of the dead soldiers. How much is needed, so much will be written off. The less galvanizing goes to Russia, the better. The people will be less disturbed, and the costs, less hassle for transportation. Therefore, the corpses of Russian soldiers must have been thrown onto burning oil rigs, into hard-to-reach mountain gorges or abysses. It was already then that the bookkeeping was started. The dead were counted. How many of the units died, present so many corpses. Unless, of course, it was covered with a bomb or a shell. So they went and collected corpses. And even the Chechens used to be exchanged. And then they extorted. They used to take hostages from the Chechens and demand that by morning there were so many corpses, otherwise the hostages would be kayuks. What a dirty mess this is.
Of course, there were decent ones among hundreds of scumbags. Not all pilots agreed to throw bombs on the heads of civilians. Sometimes they would fly to a village and drop bombs on a wasteland or into a river. A neighbor told me how on one unexploded bomb, thrown far beyond the village into a ravine, it was written: “Whatever he could, he helped.”
And then this is how it used to be: two parts of the Russian army are standing, say, on opposite mountains, the command follows: “Fire!”. And they begin to beat each other to the last soldier. I think maybe they quarreled among themselves because, as contract soldiers, those people are troubled, they don’t feel sorry for anyone. Contract soldiers were often recruited from prisoners. I have seen many soldiers. And it seems to me that among them there were many abnormal ones. They said that they were stoned, but I had seen enough of many, I can distinguish - they were psychic in nature. Stoned people are so-so, slush” (Musa P.).
The actions of federal military personnel against the civilian population gave rise to horrifying stories of the abuse of Chechen men, who were almost all suspected of participating in the hostilities. This number included even those old people who almost half a century ago participated in the war against Nazi Germany and had the status of a veteran of the Patriotic War with many social benefits. The degree of shock of the older generation is difficult to imagine, let alone explain. Before them appeared in the role of murderers their children, whose future they defended in battles with Nazi Germany.
“I kept a cow here. Raised four grandchildren. And state milk - what is it good for? Fortunately, we live on the outskirts. Before the war, a whole herd gathered here. They even hired a shepherd. A was great
Vee, I myself went to the shepherds. And as soon as the war began, I transferred the cow to a dugout. I equipped it myself from a looted warehouse. And the reel was thrown with old boxes. Here, with my youngest, all the first months we fed and watered her, and she, a smart animal, as the war began, never bellowed, as if she had become numb. He only looks with intelligent eyes, seemingly sad.
But once drunken soldiers caught me and my son. Son with a butt on the head, dragged into the house. I say that I myself am a front-line soldier, I showed the order book. So the lieutenant hit me so hard in the teeth that I spat out the last ones. You, he says, shoot us in the back. We know you bastards. And they started beating me again. It's nothing to me, I've already seen everything. I feel sorry for my son, he just turned 17. They beat us, then against the wall. Now, they say, we will shoot. So they beat off my healthy kidney that I could not stand. My son supported me. And, you know, even though he was a kid, he never groaned. And then a captain came into the yard. He saw us and asked the soldiers: “What are you doing here?”.
And the soldiers answer: “Here we let the enemies go.”
“What kind of enemies? Is this an old man and a boy enemies or something?
And the sergeant then runs up to his son, I didn’t really understand anything. He put his hand in his jacket pocket, and there were spent cartridges. Believe me, no, I'm completely numb here. He went through two wars - he was not afraid of anything. And then, when I saw the shells, it was like a stupor attacked me. Even before that, I noticed that the sergeant, raising his beaten son from the ground, put his hand into his jacket pocket. Then it flashed through my head, maybe he is looking for smoke or money. And he, it turns out, is a scoundrel, put shell casings in his pocket. It's good that the captain turned out to be experienced. He did not look at the shell casings. And he came up and looked at his son's hands.
“No,” he says, “these hands did not shoot. I'll go report to the battalion commander. And these should not be touched until my return.”
I don't know how long they were. Must be a long time. Because I fell again. But then a young soldier took pity on me. Ravil, I remember, was called. He guarded us. Here the son gradually came to his senses. And he says to this Ravil: “Listen, I will feed the cow for the last time, let it go. I'll be back. I won’t leave my father anyway.”
That soldier says: "I'll ask the platoon commander."
The sergeant who knocked out my teeth came along with two drunks. “Go,” he says, “feed. And come back in half an hour.”
I did not immediately understand why they gave us half an hour. And when we returned to the house, I understood. The soldiers took everything from the house. Everything. Even his son's tape recorder, which he hid in the pantry under a rag. All warm clothes were taken away. And what they could not take with them, they dirtied. Well, yes, jester with this junk. My son has changed a lot since then. Not that he was angry, but he became kind of sad. Everything is silent, thinking about its own” (Wadud).
A no less tragic conflict arose from the stories that those Chechens who served in the local police and considered themselves quite loyal Russian citizens were also included in the number of enemies. Moreover, some of them welcomed the introduction of troops in the hope that order would be restored in the republic. According to many, rampant violence and social disruption affected not only Russians, but no less than the Chechens themselves.

“I am now completely convinced that the war does not make sense. She is dark, insane. A young police lieutenant colonel lived next door to me. When the troops arrived, a door-to-door detour began in search of weapons. I myself was away, but my wife saw how a neighbor gave the military documents, service weapons and at the same time turned to the checking words: comrades, colleagues: “Pu, guys, now we will soon put things in order!”.
The eldest of the test took the weapon, and then as a garking in all the throat: "And well-ka to the wall, black!". And then he fired the whole clip into him. It turned out that they were contract soldiers recruited in prisons.
People were seized on the streets, in basements. Among them were responsible officials, some had certificates and guarantees from both high authorities in Russia, and even the commandant of Grozny. Such people, as it were, were let through the checkpoint for appearances. And when people relaxed, believed that the legitimate Russian government had come, they were herded into a heap and shot all together, both young and old, and women, thrown into pits and hastily covered with earth. I carried my corpses from these pits. Poo, come on, enough of that. Why should I tell you more” (Said M.).
Later investigations by human rights organizations found no similar cases of mass graves of "men, the elderly and women." It is quite possible that these were already stories supplemented by a traumatized imagination. However, we have no reason not to believe the following account by Mudar, a 60-year-old lawyer from Grozny, ethnically Ingush. Although what he describes is hardly perceived as a possible reality.
“At the end of January 1995, when the whole city was already on fire, when the war became a clear and bitter truth, I decided to break through to Ingushetia together with my student son. We bought into our “Volga” accumulated over a lifetime, surrounded ourselves with pillows - all at least some kind of protection from bullets and shrapnel, and off we went. By that time, roadblocks had already been set up. And by evening, the soldiers began to shoot everything that moves. They beat literally from all types of weapons. Just like that, for fun. I will confirm on the day of judgment that the entire Russian army was drunk to smithereens along with the commanders.
Paz, like others, was stopped at a checkpoint in the Zavodskoy district, allegedly to check documents. We come closer. Explosions of shells all around, the howl of mines, the rattle of machine guns. Our escort was drunk, and by the time we got there, he fell into the snow twice, and my son and I helped him up. We approached the post, and there, in front of the adjacent houses, corpses were apparently piled invisibly. They shot, not sparing children, women, and brought here corpses from all over the region. The cars stopped in front of us stood with their engines on, and their owners were shot right there, dying or crying out for help. At first I thought that all this seemed to me, but in the nearby heap of corpses I recognized an acquaintance who had overtaken me at the crossroads.
Paz was taken into the room. A man was sitting there, whom our escort called the captain, and he was also drunk. However, he spoke in a slurred tongue. Although it is clear.
“Where did you put them? Idiot!" - the captain turned to our escort - why are they here ?! Don't you know, foolish head, that everyone was ordered to spend ?!.

“Cleansing” (Photo by Varnikis)

The escort, who at that time turned out to be on the side of us, actually winked at the captain in an idiotic way and said: “Again, they are wearing sheepskin coats. And the hat, you see, how rich. They themselves ordered it."
“Take off your clothes!” he turned to us.
We obeyed. Then we were taken to a room that was either a dining room or a bathhouse, as there were bathrooms and tables here. And we saw with horror that in some hills there were corpses, undressed, like us. Our escort put us against the wall. I still felt like I was seeing a bad dream. It must have been helped by the fact that the room was either steam or smoke. And before I had time to wake up, I felt that both my arm and shoulder had been bitten by wasps. It was only then that I realized that we were indeed being shot. I suddenly remembered that the room used to be a laundry room, that further on it adjoins the warehouse of the city food trader. I worked there as a lawyer and knew that a lot of sausages and vodka were brought there on New Year's Eve. The son lost consciousness at that time. I leaned towards him. Something clicked against the wall and bounced off. Finally, I realized that a drunken soldier could not hit me.
He came quite close and, still smiling ridiculously, said suddenly: “Do you want a drink before you die? Are you not a mullah?
I think I answered no, and, in turn, suggested that he go out to the warehouse of the city food store, where there was a huge amount of vodka. I, was, invited him to conduct. But he realized that they could shoot me right away, and went alone, inquiring before that: “Won’t you run away?”
Before leaving, I still can’t figure out how, I managed to put on the fuse of his machine gun. The habit must have kicked in (when I was in the army, our sergeant, while hurdling, forgot to turn off the auto
the tomato was killed). It must have stuck in my subconscious for the rest of my life. However, there was still nowhere to run. I felt that hot blood was pouring into my arm, flowing down my leg. But we had to be saved. By that time, the son had already woken up and looked at me with half-witted eyes. I grabbed his hand and we ran out into the street. Already at the very turn around the corner we met a soldier carrying bottles of vodka in an armful, like firewood. He probably did not immediately recognize us, and only when we ran to the park did we hear him screaming heart-rendingly, not understanding why the machine gun did not fire.
We were saved by darkness and frost. That evening it was 20-degree cold. I don't know how they ran to Kirov Street. I was already bleeding when we popped into the apartment of an elderly Russian woman. Here I lost consciousness. I don't know how long I was unconscious, but when I woke up, it was morning. The hostess' Dutch stove hummed comfortably. My son was at my feet. My arms and shoulder were bandaged. Marya Vladimirovna, that was the name of our hostess, a portly elderly woman, smiled knowingly. But how she came out to me in a city where Chechens, and all local residents, are being shot day and night, that's another story.
From the words of my savior, I realized that the Grozny Russians were not spared either. And they were shot as soon as they fell under the arm. I am ready to swear on the Koran and I am ready to prove to any international court that in January 1995 hundreds of civilians were shot in the Zavodskoy district of the city of Grozny. Their corpses were stacked near the highway passing by the park. In an advert on local TV, I learned about a shoemaker I knew who was ahead of me on that ill-fated day and whose corpse I saw in one of the heaps near the highway. Relatives searched for him and announced him on TV as missing. His body has not yet been found” (Mudar).
One of the most common forms of violence in internal conflicts is the rape of women. It has a particularly derogatory meaning not only over a person, but also over the enemy side as a whole, i.e. representatives of another people, if we are talking about an ethnic conflict. In the former Yugoslavia, rape of women took on an almost ritualistic meaning, when Serbs or Croats deliberately kept "enemy" women, subjected them to rape and immediately released them when they reached a long pregnancy that did not allow them to have an abortion. It was a Jesuitical, absolutely paranoid "experience" of Serbs or Croats breeding in the wombs of the women of their enemies.
In Chechnya, there were no mass rapes of women during the first war. First of all, this was not allowed by the conditions when the federal troops did not completely control large territories and when there were actually no contacts with the population. In the second war, the situation changed. The military immediately occupied a large territory of northern Chechnya almost without fighting and behaved there like “liberators from bandits”. Contacts with the local population were much more active. Approximately the same situation has developed in other areas, except for distant mountain villages. Low disci
Pliny, drunkenness, isolation from the home environment and families, general bitterness and stress contributed to the emergence of cases of rape of local Chechen women.
But even here the barrier of fear for possible revenge from the relatives of the victim remained. Kheda Abdullayeva told me that she was afraid to be in Chechnya now, because there were no brothers to protect her in case of abuse. What she is really referring to is a possible deterrent for rapists. However, this circumstance is not an obstacle when soldiers can organize gang rape in a semi-anonymous setting, i.e. wresting women not from their home environment, but looking for them among travelers, refugees and other "torn off", who have lost hope of protection from relatives or others. I managed to find out one of the stories that happened already during the period of a new cycle of violence. There is reason to believe that the case with Rumisa and recorded by Kheda Saratova on July 31 of the same year was not isolated.
“I am Rumisa Z. born in 1966. I live in the Urus-Martan district. On July 17, 2000, I decided to go to Grozny to look at my house, or, more precisely, at what was left of it. I reached Grozny at 14.00, came to Gudurmesskaya Street, saw the remains of my destroyed house, stood near it, and decided to return home. It was around 4:30 pm. I was returning home in a minibus, in which there were other passing passengers. There was a long line in front of the Russian checkpoint, which is located in the village of Chernorechye, at the very exit from the city of Grozny. Our car had to wait a long time.
We stayed up late. For a very long time, every car and every person, both women and men, were checked. I was worried that I did not have a second photo pasted in my passport. When I went to the city, they practically did not check my passport. We sat in the car and watched what was happening ahead. The soldiers started detaining people for no reason. I saw how several men were brought into the car. I can’t say anything about the fate of the detainees, they were people I didn’t know. Probably, some driver did not give the soldiers money, they naturally got angry and began to grab people for no reason. Usually they did not find fault with the documents of women, but when they did start checking everyone in a row, I got scared. And so it happened. They started detaining me because I didn't have a second photo in my passport. I was told that they were taking me away for clarification, and then they would let me go. After they detained me, they took me to the car, they said that you would stay here for some time. There were two or three small rooms in the carriage. I was locked up with three more women who were already there (two Chechens and one Russian or Ukrainian, I can’t say for sure). These women were all bruised, they looked terribly tortured. I was terrified, trembling and could not speak.
We were kept in this trailer for two days. The soldiers came in and took us out one by one and led us into another room. Naturally, each of us heard the screams of the one who was taken to another room. Picto did not come to our aid, and our pleas for mercy did not move the rapists. We sat and waited for our turn, and, of course, it came. For resistance
I was beaten very severely with fists and feet. True, they did not beat them with batons or anything else. There were eight soldiers in all, they were drunk all the time.
For two days we were in this hell. I can't go into all the details of what they did to us. During these two days, each of us was taken out more than twenty times. We often lost consciousness. Every time I regained consciousness, I wished I hadn't died yet.
On the third morning, the door suddenly opened and Chechen men appeared. They told us in Chechen: “Quickly get out of here!”. They were in military camouflage uniforms. We decided that they were Chechen policemen. We realized that this was salvation, and, without looking back, we ran along the highway leading towards Urus-Martan. The Chechen militiamen remained at their post. Where did the Russian soldiers go, what happened to them, we do not know. But we did not hear any shooting or noise at the post. After some time we were caught up by a passing car, a minibus. He stopped and I went to Urus-Martan. The three women who were with me stayed on the road. They had to wait for the car to get to the Naur region. Of course, I survived. But everything inside me broke down. I think all the time about how to take revenge on these beasts for what they did to me. I can only take revenge if I become a kamikaze, as my brother and sister did, who drove into the Russian checkpoint in the village of Yermolovka and exploded along with the car in retaliation for the fact that the soldiers raped, killed and buried their sister.
I have a request to you: do not give my last name anywhere, I am already ashamed to go out into the street. It always seems to me that people around me guess about it. In general, I live only for the sake of my old mother, whom I cannot leave.
I initially took the position of trusting the authors of stories, because even if they contain fiction, it also has a socio-cultural meaning. For all the improbability and absurdity of what is happening, some information and observations seem indisputable and important. Alcohol played an exceptional role, being a constant companion and a condition for the execution of violence in the Chechen conflict, if we talk about the federal army. Alcohol is not only a social and cultural problem of a national nature, but a scourge of Russian politics and the armed forces. During the war, vodka was supplied to Chechnya in huge quantities, including through supplies from North Ossetia, one of the main underground producers in Russia. I can testify that at the time of my visit to Chechnya in October 1995, vodka was everywhere: from general staffs to soldiers' knapsacks.
The state of alcoholic intoxication freed a person from moral constraints and from the need to obey the law. A drunken person, if he is armed or has the ability to give orders to kill, organizes and commits violence much more easily, although less skillfully. The Russian military and civilian leadership, including Defense Minister Pavel Grachev, consumed alcohol regularly and in pain during their stay in Chechnya.
high doses. The drunk look of the minister was noticeable at the moments of almost all of his appearances in front of journalists, which was recorded by a television camera. His fateful decision for the conflict to carry out a tank assault on Grozny on New Year's Eve 1995 was made while intoxicated. Many officers and soldiers fought while intoxicated. This influenced the unjustified cruelty and disproportionate violence that the feds demonstrated. One of the journalists, who arrived in Vladikavkaz from Ingushetia after the first day of the war with a broken camera in a car with bullet holes, remarked: “Almost all of them are drunk and it seems they have an attitude towards lawlessness.”
The civilian population of Chechnya faced something like this for the first time in their lives. The vast majority of Chechens, Ingush and Russians grew up in the peaceful post-war years. This generation did not see the armed struggle and did not personally experience large-scale violence, especially against the civilian population by its own army. The first reaction is shock and disbelief from what he saw, or perception of it as a bad dream or a tragic mistake. Hence the despair due to the impossibility of reporting what is happening, of exerting some influence on it. But the main feeling is fear for your life and your loved ones, as well as concern to save property.
I do not aim to describe in equal measure the atrocities committed by the warring Chechens. Some of them will be discussed in Chapter XIII. But it should be noted that this cruelty was just as boundless, although it had its own peculiarities, including cultural ones. First of all, the Chechens loved a kind of staging and affective forms of violence, both in the course of a direct armed conflict, and especially in the treatment of prisoners and hostages. By showing violence, they wanted to give more enthusiasm to those fighting against the army and intimidate the feds. In some ways, this strategy was effective and achieved its goal.
Russian society and military personnel have developed their own mythology about the brutality of Chechens, which is confirmed by some collected evidence from human rights organizations. Torture and abuse of the wounded and killed were especially practiced. Captured contract servicemen and pilots were executed in almost all cases. Ordinary soldiers were often used as hostages for jobs ranging from building fortifications to household chores. It was already after the war that a business was established for ransoming hostages who were subjected to demonstrative violence and torture. Moreover, such actions were often filmed in order to transfer the kidnapped to the relatives in order to quickly resolve the issue of paying money (see Chapter XIII).
“After the occupation of Grozny by the Russians, we did not give them a single day of respite. The war, of course, was cruel. The soldiers of our battalion

when the Russians were not taken prisoner. And even the wounded were certainly finished off. There were also knackers among us, who took pleasure in slaughtering captured Russian soldiers, cutting out their insides. I never did it, because I was disgusted with it, as it would be disgusting to cut a pig. And in general, most of the guys did not like flayers. They condemned them.
And once, when our commander saw how a gloomy middle-aged man Shakhri, who had just crept in to us, began to cut out the insides, he personally shot him in front of the battalion. Later, however, it turned out that the gloomy man had come to us from a madhouse. In fact, there were different people there. I think that we have become brutalized for the war” (Khizir I.).
“I did not think that such a war was possible at the end of the 20th century. The first time this happened. It felt like a terrible dream. Instead of houses, there were skeletons, burnt trees. In May we returned to the city. We started trading again. There were few buyers. There was no contact with the soldiers. Chaos reigned in the city. Soldiers drove around the city at high speed in tanks, ran into cars. There was only fear. We had a case in the market. Officers with security guards walked around the market, buying expensive equipment. Two officers with a girl were buying film, they didn't like the price and they took the film and decided to leave without paying. When they were asked to pay, the girl said: "You will get through, black".
At this time, we did not even have time to come to our senses, as a young, intelligent-looking man stopped, took the girl by the hair and shot her in the throat. She fell, he immediately shot the officer who was next to her, and jumped into the market building and disappeared. Two guards came to their senses, pointed their machine guns at us and shouted: "Speak who shot." They were terribly scared. All the merchants were frightened and crawled under the tables, feverishly grabbing their clothes. We were at the entrance. I thought this was the end. The only thing that worried me was whether they would take me home. Then they suddenly jumped out and left. After 20 minutes, the Russians cordoned off the market and began to search, but they did not find anyone. It was pure work. They had to pay dearly for their words. Russians were killed very often, and precisely in crowded places. The Russians themselves brought people down, behaved vulgarly, insulted. Few have survived it. Felt like owners. Every day was like the last” (Hava).

Let's go back three years. Recall that, having seized power, the Dudayev regime began not only to train and arm the militants, but also to psychologically indoctrinate the local population. From day to day there was a dense stream of materials in the media, where undisguised hostility towards the Russians, hatred towards Moscow, allegedly seeking to once again "enslave" the Chechen people, was seen.
These grains of distrust and anger, sown in the hearts of many Chechen residents over the course of three years, have given their sprouts. Anti-Russian sentiments became more and more pronounced. An increasing number of residents of non-Chechen nationality were subjected to humiliation, violence and simply physical extermination. The tone of this campaign of terror was set by punishers from illegal armed groups.
With the beginning of the military operations of the federal troops, the bestial face of Dudaevism was completely exposed. Savage murders, rape, torture, mockery of the bodies of the dead - this is the flood of evil that the militants unleashed on the civilian population, on the Russian military. Chechnya, as it were, became the victim of a gigantic terrorist act, a kind of explosion in Oklahoma City, but raised to the nth degree.
Thus, the Dudayev regime pursued several goals. Firstly, to demoralize Russian soldiers and officers, to sow panic among them, to suppress their will. Secondly, to provoke a response from the federal troops in order to later accuse the Russian army of brutality and at the same time exacerbate a sense of revenge among the militants. And thirdly, to discourage the field commanders from the desire to negotiate the voluntary surrender of weapons.
Dudayev's regime skillfully manipulated public opinion. Foreign and Russian journalists were freely allowed into the places where

captured Russian servicemen, willingly allowed to talk to them. Some of the soldiers were even returned to their parents.
And at the same time, in an effort to intimidate the federal troops, Dudayev's militants showed incredible cruelty to the prisoners.
Let's get a grasp of these uncontrived eyewitness accounts. What is it - Babi Yar, Auschwitz, Treblinka? No, this is Chechnya in early 1995, where Dudayev's militants seem to have set out to surpass the sadistic records of the Nazis.
...After an unsuccessful New Year's attack in the Neftyanka area, the outskirts of Grozny, two BMPs with seven fighters fell into the hands of the Dudaevites. Three of the wounded were immediately laid on the ground, doused with gasoline and set on fire. Then, in front of the townspeople, dumbfounded by this wild spectacle, the militants stripped the remaining four soldiers naked and hung them up by their legs. Then they began to methodically cut off their ears, gouge out their eyes, rip open their stomachs.
The mutilated corpses hung for three days. Local residents were not allowed to bury the dead. When one of the men began to especially insistently ask that the remains of the soldiers be buried in the ground, he was immediately shot dead. The rest were warned: "So it will be with anyone who comes near the bodies."
...Not far from the checkpoint of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Staropromyslovsky district of Grozny there is a grave of an unknown soldier. Eyewitnesses say: when the militants set fire to an infantry fighting vehicle, one of the Russian soldiers pulled out a wounded comrade and, firing back, carried him to the basement. The Dudayevites were able to take the soldier prisoner only after he ran out of ammunition. The Russian guy was dragged to the bathhouse, where he was brutally tortured for more than two days. Having achieved nothing, the bandits in a rage killed his arms and legs with automatic bursts, cut off his ears. They tried to carve a bloody star on the back. Already dead, the soldier was thrown onto the road, as usual forbidding to bury. But under the cover of night, the locals nevertheless buried his body in the ground.

No matter how painful it is to read about this, let's continue the chronicle of horrors. If this terrible truth is not told here, then we are unlikely to hear anything like that from other human rights activists, anti-patriotic in their zeal, like "Serge" Kovalev.
... Taking advantage of the lull, the marines, including senior sailor Andrey Belikov, began to take the wounded and dead to a safe place. Already in the evening they went to the outskirts of the village, where, according to intelligence, a local woman hid the seriously wounded.
When the car drove up to the house, the headlights snatched out of the darkness the soldier hanging on the gate. A second lay in a pool of blood nearby. The owner of the house was found on the floor behind the stove. Naked, disfigured beyond recognition, with a piece of paper on her forehead. On the sheet it was printed: "Russian pig".
It has been documented: Dudayev's militants tortured captured soldiers and officers. So, during the autopsy of the body of lieutenant-border guard A. Kurylenko, military doctors found traces of cauterization of the skin of the chest, multiple chopped and cut wounds, as well as symmetrical stab holes on the forearms - the result of suspension. The bodies of two of his comrades, Lieutenant A. Gubankov and Private S. Yermashev, were mutilated in approximately the same way. They did not take a direct part in the hostilities, but were abducted by militants in the area of ​​the village of Assinovskaya.
At the same Assinovskaya, two officers from the crew of a helicopter designed to transport the wounded were brutally killed. On the bodies - traces of mockery.
As you know, they don't shoot at the red cross. But during the operation in Chechnya, 9 medical workers were killed and many wounded. Moreover, at the moment when they either provided assistance to the wounded, or were in ambulances with a clearly marked red cross. Thus, the militants, hiding behind children and women, attacked a motorcade with medical equipment near the city of Nazran and severely beat three female army medical workers.
General Lev Rokhlin, commander of the 8th Corps, confirmed the information that during the seizure of the building of the Council of Ministers in Grozny, the crucified bodies of Russian servicemen were found in the window openings. Often, soldiers' corpses were mined, which led to losses among doctors and orderlies.
Here is more terrible evidence in mean telegraph lines:
Soldier (identity unknown). Left eye cut out. Raped. Killed with two shots at close range.
Private V. Dolgushin. Died from blast injury. When examining the body, it was found that after the death of the soldier, the right testicle was cut off.
Junior Sergeant F. Vedenev. There is a cut wound on the neck. Damaged larynx, carotid arteries. The right ear was cut off.
Among the most heinous crimes of the Dudaevites is their use of the civilian population, children and women in hostilities. Sometimes living people created some kind of Japanese kamikaze.
Ensign Eduard Shakhbazov from the 74th motorized rifle brigade says:
“On January 31, I was in ambush when I saw a short Chechen running towards us. I cocked the trigger of the machine gun, took aim. But looking closer, I saw: just a boy. and the shot of a Chechen sniper clicked. It turned out that the boy was all hung with plastite, a viscous explosive, in its destructive power many times more powerful than TNT. From the impact of a bullet on the guy’s back, a detonator went off. He was torn to pieces. At the same time, three of my soldiers were wounded and damaged I was knocked to the ground by an explosive wave, and jumping up, I saw about a dozen more teenagers running towards our vehicles, the same "live projectiles".
As noted above, local residents were often used by the Dudayevites as human shields.
The militants often set up guns, tanks under the cover of hospitals, schools, residential buildings, thereby calling on them artillery and mortar fire from the federal troops.
Thus, the Dudaevites are trying in every possible way to draw the civilians of Chechnya into the conflict, instill fear in them, arouse hatred for the federal army. And sometimes the most savage methods are used. So, dressed in the form of Russian soldiers, the bandits attack peaceful villages, rob, kill people - just to stain the enemy with innocent blood.
For example, on January 6, on one of the streets of Grozny, a small child was burned to death by militants. The killers were in the form of soldiers of the Russian troops. The crime was filmed on videotape. Apparently, the organizers of this wild provocation intended to stage it somewhere abroad in order to accuse the Russian army of cannibalistic crimes.
It is significant that during the fighting in Grozny, Dudayev's snipers fired at civilians, aiming mainly at the legs. There were cases when men and women had their tendons cut or chained. In such inhuman ways, they wanted to prevent civilians, primarily Russians, from leaving the city and thereby, to some extent, protect themselves from shelling.
The mercenaries were no less cruel. During interrogation, one of them, a resident of Volgograd, O. Rakunov, said that, together with Dudayev's militants, he had repeatedly attacked Russian residents both in Grozny itself and in the village of Pervomaisky. Rakunov admitted: they put the girls in cars, took them to the city of Shali, to the headquarters, raped them there, and then shot them.
To some extent, Dudayev's militants managed to achieve their goal. Some of the Russian residents of Grozny were intimidated to such an extent that they did not even dare to approach the soldiers of the federal troops if there were Chechens nearby. They feared that revenge would follow. Everyone in the city knows how the Dudaevites took revenge on one woman who for several days sheltered wounded Russian soldiers at her home. Shortly after she transferred the fighters to the hospital, she was shot. Apparently, as a warning to others...
It is hard to believe that all this happened on the land of Chechnya, where the concepts of honor and dignity are not empty words. Where to insult a woman, hit a child, shoot an enemy in the back was once considered a shame for a real highlander.

"Let's help you die. OMON ATC KhMAO"

Only bottomless blue eyes make it possible to recognize the once charming and active Elima in this broken woman who has lost interest in life. It's hard to believe she's only 42 years old. Of these, exactly one third - 14 years - she devoted to trying to save her only brother Adam, who was taken away from his home during the cleansing in Grozny and sentenced to 18 years in prison. She was recently diagnosed with cancer. Inoperable brain tumor. According to doctors, she had nothing left to live.

“There were no tears left, and my heart stopped aching,” said Elima, as we walked with her through a small town near Prague. It seemed that she would continue to speak in monosyllables, in short phrases. But no, she still talked.

The second war began violently. They surrounded houses, quarters, districts, villages and took everyone in a row. Violence and the sale to relatives of people beaten to a pulp and dead bodies are widespread. They even took money for knowingly false information about the missing, and then they drove away relatives whose sons, husbands and brothers were taken away in an unknown direction.

Adam was taken from his house in the private sector of the Oktyabrsky district of the city of Grozny. Late in the evening of April 16, 2000, UAZ trucks and an armored personnel carrier stopped at the gate, masked military men broke into the house and immediately began to beat the young man.

The military was especially furious with the book that Adam was reading, Boccaccio's Decameron. One of the soldiers threw the book on the floor and started trampling it with dirty curses, while the other unzipped his fly in front of everyone and urinated on it. Adam's father was indignant: "What do you allow yourself, how dare you?!" Machine gun butts rained down on him, and he lost consciousness. The mother, who slid to the floor against the wall, was ignored. She then had her first heart attack.

At dawn, a neighbor of Elima's parents rushed to her and said that Adam had been taken away at night, and her parents were in a very bad condition. She advised me to take more money in order to redeem my brother from "these Khanty-Mansiysk nonhumans". "If not today, then you won't find any traces," she said, running away.

“I sewed well and we had money,” Elima continues her story. The operational group of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation in the Oktyabrsky district of Grozny was located in the three-story building of the former boarding school for the deaf and dumb. When, together with her husband, she came to the main entrance, there were already Chechens standing there, whose sons and brothers had been taken away the night before. On the façade, on the frame of the window, covered with bags of earth, it was written in white oil paint: "We don't give a fuck ... your grief." The walls were covered with the names of cities and the names of the surnames of the riot police who came to the Chechen Republic. Especially stuck in my memory: "Let's help to die. OMON. ATC KhMAO."

“The whole system is built in such a way that you are nobody, and an unwashed boor with a machine gun is the master of your life. I later found out that everything related to money is perfectly adjusted. You give money, and they no longer say “didn’t see, didn’t take” "The money tied us to some kind of contract. There was no case that they refused the money."

That day they took two thousand dollars from Elima, but they did not let her brother go. They told me to come get him the next morning. The next day they asked for another fifteen hundred. After waiting until late at night, Elima again had to leave without her brother. On the third day it turned out that the contract officer who had taken money from Elima and promised to "help" had gone home to Khanty-Mansiysk. The employee of the task force who reported this news has already requested five thousand dollars. "Now it's more difficult. He's in business, there will be a trial. But don't worry, your brother is alive," he said.

Borrowed and given to the same employee five thousand dollars did not help Elima even see her brother. Transfers with food and clothes were taken willingly. It was later that she found out that the riot police kept everything for themselves. Elima no longer remembers on whose recommendation she hired a lawyer and how much she paid him. Remember that it took a lot of money. All the money she had held in her hands since Adam's arrest had been spent on saving him. Before the trial, Elima buried her parents. People say about such people: they burned with grief. I sold my parents' house and Adam's car for next to nothing. “There was no money,” says Elima, “my hands would not obey, I could no longer sew.”

The day of judgment has come. “Something crooked and disheveled was brought into the courtroom, which, strangely spreading its legs, awkwardly moved to the cell for the accused with the help of escorts ... From my cry, the escorts at the door first froze, and then pointed their machine guns at me. When I realized that it was something that is dragged in a hurry - my brother, my brain and heart exploded at the same time. It seemed to me that I was having a terrible dream with monsters, which was about to end. The lawyer took the money, but he never visited his brother! And he was tortured there ..."

“The accusations were hastily concocted and frankly absurd. The judge simply had to acquit Adam and release him there, in the courtroom. But the judge did not dare and in a monotonous voice read out the verdict: 18 years in a maximum security colony for terrorism and murder. Adam did not kill anyone! Through my clients, I found out that the Russian, whose murder my brother was accused of, had drunk all his life and died a natural death. Compassionate people buried him, and I found them! I found the burial place, photographed. Witnesses swore and swore that he had died bit by bit, I brought to the lawyer what I was able to find out ... But suddenly something incomprehensible began. One by one, the witnesses began to deny everything that had been told to me before. It was felt that they were scared to death. The lawyer "lost" my photos, data of witnesses and my notes of their stories…"

Talking about the torture of her brother, Elima convulsively clenches her fingers.

“Before the arrest, my brother was 1.90 m tall. A tall, stately young man of 20 years old, with thick hair. All his insides were beaten off. His fingers were broken: Adam refused to sign an empty form ... They also hung him on a horizontal bar with his hands tied and legs. From this, the bones come out of the joints. He hung, and they put a plastic bag on his head and tied it around his neck with a rope. When he suffocated and lost consciousness, they filmed. When he twitched from suffocation, he caused unimaginable pain ... They put him face to the wall, hands on the wall, forcing him to spread his legs wide, beat him in the crotch and shouted that he would never have children ...

A tube was inserted into the anus, barbed wire was inserted there, and the tube was pulled out. The barbed wire remains in the rectum. The rest ran to watch when they sharply tore out the barbed wire with their guts inside out! They called it "rose". The mouth was forcibly opened and the oral cavity was burned with a soldering iron. He couldn't eat or drink...

In the sports hall of the boarding school, riot police hung a cross made of rails. The detainees were tied to it and tortured with electric current. The survivors were dragged back to the cell and thrown on the cold floor at the entrance ... Those who quickly broke down and signed testimony and sentences for themselves were tortured for pleasure. The riot police get drunk and then have fun.

Adam is not yet lucky to be tall. He was beaten both for being a Chechen and for being tall. They beat them and said: "You will never have children! We select you!"

While Elima was tossing about with hopelessness, an FSB officer sent to the Chechen Republic, who introduced himself as Sergei Bobrov, came to their house for "conversations", finding out when she was going to tie herself with a suicide bomber's belt. To Elima's bewildered look, he answered that in her place he would have taken revenge on the "unbridled military."

“When I told Anna Politkovskaya about Adam in Moscow, she burst into tears. I told her all this on the recorder in their editorial office of Novaya Gazeta. She was going to write a big material about Adam and other Chechen prisoners and speak in Europe. Our guys from prisons they wrote to her a lot. After the murder of Anna, they found me and threatened me. The cassette was all about our family, the capture of Adam, torture, the trial, who and how I bribed to alleviate Adam's suffering. .

Elima traveled almost all over Russia. Or rather, those cities where there are prisons. There was no money, and she took on any job - from a nanny in a hospital to a cleaner at the station. Anti-Chechen hysteria was in the air, and Elima was forced to hide the fact that she was a Chechen. Fortunately, no one asked for documents and did not officially register it, so as not to draw up a pension and social benefits.

Elima's tiny earnings went to food and medicine not only for Adam, but also for his cellmates. Then there was the cost of paying for a mobile phone, which prison officials regularly confiscate from prisoners - in order to sell it back.

Slept where needed. If you're lucky - in an empty room, but mostly in a closet for dirty hospital linen. The first time Elima managed to get a date with Adam was more than a year after he was sent on stage.

“I took Adam’s hands and put them on my cheeks, closing my eyes. He was embarrassed by his broken fingers. He joked that he would heal before the wedding. And I swaggered in front of him: they say, everything is wonderful with me. on the river, went to the forest for blackberries. Even the cat Muska was remembered and the dog Tarzan. Knowing that they were listening and peeping at us, I made him put his head on my shoulder and seemed to fall asleep. Here in this position, with the lights off "He told me about the atrocities and torture. I stroked his head and felt for solid sores and bumps. What did they do to my brother? Damn them!"

Adam does not give up and therefore does not get out of the punishment cells. He fights not only for himself, but also for the guys who are in an even worse condition than he is. Adam studied the Criminal Code and the Constitution of the Russian Federation and fights competently. FSB officers regularly visit him and directly declare: he will never leave prison.

Adam told Elima that Chechen prisoners are forced to take on crimes that are committed even after their arrest. exclaims Elima.

“Why are our guys getting radicalized?” she asks rhetorically. “Half of our healthy, smart guys were illegally imprisoned so that one gray, nondescript KGB man could rule a huge country and ensure the safety of the stolen by his drunken predecessor and his entourage. And the rest of the population ... flees to Europe, others - to ... Syria.

Over the years, Elima visited more than one hundred Chechen children completely unfamiliar to her, who had no relatives left. Delivered food and news. At Elima's request, I do not mention the city and number of the prison where Adam is being held. According to her, there is not a single prison in Russia where there would not be Chechens accused of terrorism, banditry and illegal possession of weapons.

He called in the middle of the night and said, "I'm calling from hell."

Movsar, 47, fought in the first Chechen war. Now he is sitting in a prison in the Arkhangelsk region with a sentence and a term of 24 years of strict regime for terrorism, an attempt on the foundations of the state system and the integrity of the Russian Federation. The verdict exactly coincides with the sentences of thousands of Chechens captured during the cleansing operations in the early years of the Second Chechen War.

Movsar does not regret that he resisted. But he cannot forgive himself for the fact that, instead of actively joining the political life of the republic after the Khasavyurt agreements, he took up the restoration of his father's destroyed house. "First, it was necessary to secure a place for the house," he says.

A 27-year-old young man in a sheepskin coat and a knitted hat went to defend Grozny in mid-December 1994 in his father's old car. On the way, I stopped at a cafe and got a full bowl of Chechen cakes with cottage cheese and several thermoses of tea for the defenders of the capital. Picked up the machine gun and uniforms on the city street the very next day.

The soldiers of Dudayev's army did not want peaceful Chechens to take risks, and instructed them only to provide assistance to the wounded, to deliver water and food. When the bombing and artillery shelling pushed the Chechen resistance out of Grozny, Movsar - he makes no secret of it - joined him.

"I defended my country from the invaders. Russian President Yeltsin officially announced that everyone should take "as much sovereignty as they can swallow." After centuries of humiliation, the Chechens decided to secede from Russia. We did not fire a single shot on Russian territory. They came to us with weapons, and we met them with weapons. They would have come with music, and we would have taken out our musical instruments. I am still sure that I fought against Russian state terrorism," says Movsar.

Masked soldiers came for him in the early chilly morning of February 26, 2000. Sleepily, they dragged him out of bed, dragged him out into the yard and threw him face down into a puddle of wet snow. The barking dog was shot by a soldier who was smoking nonchalantly and pressing down Movsar's head with a heavy boot. "Chechen creature, you will know how to open your mouth!" the military man swore and put out his cigarette butt on Movsar's head. At the site of the burn, on the top of his head, Movsar's hair no longer grows.

At this time, the military ransacked the house in search of weapons. They didn't find anything. Without hiding, they brought a bag of weapons from an armored personnel carrier and, pouring out the contents, registered everything on Movsar. To the cries of his mother, wife and the crying of two young children, he was thrown into a truck on naked, cold bodies with his hands and feet tied, and taken away. In addition to Movsar, they took a large carpet from the living room, cast-iron pans, a cauldron and jars of cucumbers from the cellar. We drove for a long time, stood for a long time and finally brought to some military base. Two contractors climbed into the back, threw back the tarpaulin and began to play "chamomile": alive - not alive. They kicked with a boot from the side, right under the ribs. It was clear that they were not the first time. Moaned - alive. He is silent - they rolled him up like a roll to the edge and threw him off the truck.

Only two survived: Movsar and another guy, whose one eye was black, and the lower half of his face was crushed. “This guy tried to open his stuck lips and say something. But they hit me backhand with the butt of a machine gun, and I lost consciousness. I never saw this guy again. Most likely, he died. I woke up in a cage where I could not sit down, I was in this cage for nearly three weeks.

The chin has to be pressed to the chest, knees bent at ear level. Toilet - once a day. And so cold! I dreamed of dying. There were a lot of cells and people in cells. Every half an hour, someone from the guards went around the cages and hit the top with something heavy. There was no way to forget or fall asleep. They took me out of this cell for interrogations, where they tortured me with electric shocks.

The guard comes, opens the cage, and the person must quickly crawl out of it, straighten up and run. Naturally, I could not straighten up - let alone run. They beat him brutally. I stumbled and fell - they let the dogs in. There was only one question during the interrogations: where is Maskhadov? But if I knew, I wouldn't say. They demanded the names of those who fought or fought. The skin and nails were pulled with tongs. They hung him by his legs, put a plastic bag over his head and smoked in it. Heels burned with a soldering iron.

Hitting the kidneys with bottles of water is the easiest torture. They took them out into the street naked, doused them with water from a hose and forced them to stand. They took me to hang. Stopped twitching - filmed. Again and again. When he lost consciousness, they gave some kind of injections.

Dozens died in cages. Every day they were dragged away by other prisoners. The dead had broken and crushed hands, legs, cut off their ears, broken jaws. From beatings and torture, the bodies were abnormally black. We were ordered to pile them up and place explosives between them. From the blown up bodies there were dust, nails and teeth. No body, no business."

At the end of March, we were all released from the cages and taken to some field. The military were especially evil. All of us, half-dressed, smelly, were put in one long row and told to go. We didn't know we were standing at a minefield. They thought they would shoot in the back. One prisoner suddenly took off like a madman, and the military were afraid to follow him into the field. We were all chased after him, and immediately explosions began. Bodies flew up, torn apart. We were instantly covered with someone else's blood, guts and shreds of burnt skin. And the "crazy" kept running like a bewitched one. Maybe then I had hallucinations, but I saw that the rays of the sun peeking out of the clouds illuminated only him. I prayed and walked - and suddenly I was thrown up too. But it was a comrade nearby that exploded, and I was only shell-shocked and wounded by shrapnel.

When everyone was blown up on the field, they sent a second chain of Chechen prisoners to make sure that there were no mines and to collect the remains of what were human bodies. They were also forced to dig a trench and bury it in one heap. I prayed that I would die there, but for some reason I stayed alive. They didn't put me in a cage again. The wounds began to fester. I washed them with water that was brought to drink. Unexpectedly, about a week later, I was sent to Chernokozovo. They still beat me there. From there to Pyatigorsk. Court. 24 years".

Movsar has already served thirteen and a half years. For half a year, under torture, the court did not count how bitterly Movsar jokes, mistaking it for a sanatorium. When asked how you endured all these tortures, cold and hunger, Movsar has one answer: “The Almighty only knows. I died a long time ago, and I am not who I was. If there is hell on earth, I am in this hell. will help me and other Chechen guys who are rotting in prisons, in the truest sense of the word.

Once again, I hung in the cell for about a day in handcuffs and naked, in the impossible cold. To say that I was in pain is to say nothing. I screamed and twitched. Then I whispered prayers and wished myself dead. I called on the Almighty, and I had the feeling that where I am, he is not there and my prayers hit the walls and slide down. I saw it and realized that I was going crazy."

Movsar is one of the unbroken Chechens. Does not go to "cooperation" - the implementation of dirty orders from prison administrations. He did not write appeals, does not think to apply for a conditional release, and generally behaves like a person who knows that he will not get out of prison alive. He spends almost all his time in a punishment cell, where he has to be on his feet in the dark from 6 am to 10 pm. Ice on the walls, dripping from the ceiling. Dirty, muddy water is always ankle-deep on the concrete floor.

In early August last year, FSB officers came to him and said that they had brought "warm greetings from Ramzan Kadyrov." Movsar was offered to go as a volunteer to Ukraine - to fight for Russia. For this, if he survives, he is promised freedom. Movsar chose prison. And most importantly, as he says, in this way he made sure that Ramzan Kadyrov is aware that thousands of Chechen children are rotting in prisons for no reason.

Since mid-August last year, I have lost all contact with Movsar.

"They think they are the arbiters of fate"

Employees of Russian prisons, for the most part, fought or served in the Chechen Republic on a contract basis. This left an imprint on the work upon return.

By torture, torture, psychological suppression of Chechen prisoners, they increase self-esteem and move up the career ladder. I was able to speak with a middle-level prison officer who is not like his colleagues. He could become a human rights activist, but he believes that by working there, behind barbed wire, he will be able to do more for suffering people.

Let's call him Alex.

- So, I do not name names, surnames, positions and, as you understand, the name and location of the prison where I work.

- For several months you did not agree to a conversation. What ultimately influenced you?

- There was a lot of injustice in my life, and this is a vicious circle. I realized that I need to start with myself, and I want to atone for my guilt, I am not sinless.

- How did you come to prison?

- How can I tell you - from Chechnya or through it. Several times for two or three months I got there on business trips. And before that, after the army, he went to the police - there was no other job in our town. From the police we were sent on a contract basis to the Chechen Republic. The psychological preparation was concrete, I could not even wait until we get there. I wanted to tear everyone to hell. I got into reality right away - I participated in special operations to detain terrorists. Accompanied the capture teams. Together with the "terrorist" who had been beaten to death, the guys grabbed property from houses, and sometimes cars were taken away. But our superiors turned a blind eye to this.

Upon our return, psychologists worked with us. Calmed down. I also went to church with my father. But either he didn’t understand me, or I didn’t understand him ... But then I decided, I’ll find out, what’s the matter with this Chechnya and these Chechens, what is it for them. I borrowed books from the library and found a lot of information on the Internet. The next trip went with other brains and eyes.

- And how many more were there among the contractors, who asked questions?

- No one. At least I haven't met. Permissiveness and impunity separates a person from reality. Before colleagues and superiors, I never showed that I was interested in something more than what the authorities consider necessary.

- When did the revaluation of values ​​occur?

- In the Staropromyslovsky district, on Zavety Ilyich Street, they went to take an accomplice of the militants. One of our Chechen informants, we call them "bitches", reported. We arrived and there was no one there. We sat in ambush, no one came. The guys are hungry, angry, they decided to break away on the tenants of the house. They kicked down the doors and jumped in. In our business, the main thing is surprise, screams and psychoattack. Used mat, the dirtiest. It's paralyzing. The apartment was clean and simple. A woman in her fifties and her son. A young man, unnaturally pale, thin, with neatly combed hair and huge eyes, was reclining on a sofa. His mother fed him with a spoon. Our people decided that he was a wounded militant, and the woman was caring for him.

To the cries of "Get up!", "To the wall, bitch!", "Hands behind your head! Spread your legs! Move!" she stood up and looked at us with a sort of condescending look. Amidst the noise and swearing, she quietly but clearly said that her son is disabled, he does not walk, and she will now show a certificate of a disabled person ...

Then her son began to have an epileptic fit. But the guys pounced, dragged him along with the blanket to the floor and began to kick him. He, like a feather, flew up to the ceiling and, folding in half, fell back. The mother pounced on them like a tigress. She, too, was hit so hard that she flew off against the wall.

The guy was bleeding from his ears and nose, and his eyes remained very wide open, as if surprised. We stepped over the bodies and went to the kitchen. They grabbed everything that could be gnawed, and left to destroy and kill further. On that day, the group was left with more than twenty corpses and fifteen young children captured from their own homes ... I was ashamed and hurt. I did not kill, but I stood nearby and did not interfere. I stopped riding with capture teams. Then I traded corpses.

- Explain what it means to trade in corpses?

- Very simple. They bring a half-corpse, already processed by ours. In the harsh conditions of detention, many did not survive. In the paddy wagon they tortured me with electric shocks. They were so zealous that the covers of the skulls literally flew off people. Burnt with a blowtorch. Nails pulled with pliers. We had those who liked to tie living people to a tank and carry them along the roads and fields. They brought broken bones.

Holes of various sizes were dug to contain the detainees. Lime was poured there and the prisoner was lowered. Lime corrodes. From above the pits were covered with logs. There were also five or six people sitting in larger pits. The dead lie there with the living for several days. Chechens treat the dead with respect. But here the dead were laid prone and squatted on his back. You can't straighten up in a hole. They relieved their needs there. It was impossible to pass by the pits, there was such a stench! People were dying like flies.

Relatives came for them. But you can't just hand over a corpse like that. Reporting and all. The Chechens knew that we did not give away the corpses, and they offered big money. We knew that a family, as a rule, did not have that kind of money and that relatives, neighbors, and even the whole village pooled it together. This money had to be shared with the authorities. I did not leave money for the corpses, but only took it in order to give it upstairs. I couldn't do much. The system draws you in and obliges you.

Why don't you leave this job?

Do you think they'll let me do it? I will die from "heart failure" or they will draw such compromising evidence on me ... But a human rights activist cannot do as much as I do ...

- What is your help?

Well, I don't help everyone. I will not help the inveterate villains. You understand, you can immediately see by the person whether he is guilty or not. There was such a case. They brought a Chechen guy. Caught on the street in Moscow. University student. They just clung because of their Caucasian appearance, got into the millstones, so to speak. I've seen a lot in my lifetime, but what they did to him... The guy was quite young. He was raped with a bottle of champagne so that the bottle cracked in the gut and was pulled back along with the insides.

Doctors were not called for a couple of days. I don't even know how he didn't bleed to death and die in pain. He was pressed for a whole week, and he signed everything that was slipped to him, in the hope that he would refuse to testify at the trial. The court ignored the confessions obtained under torture, and the guy was soldered for 20 years. I asked the guys who escorted him: why are you with him like that? They said that he had such a fate, and burst out laughing. You understand, they imagine themselves to be the arbiters of destinies.

I also beat, scream, swear, but without witnesses I help as best I can. If I leave, a sadist and a fiend will take my place. Many are sick in the head. Failed life, unemployment, bribes on every corner. Officials who fatten and are densely settled abroad. And these guys ask themselves: why am I worse? Nobody interferes with beating, torturing and torturing. You can do it with complete impunity - just improve your performance. Your boss absolutely doesn't give a damn how you achieve performance. You improve statistics for your boss, and your boss gives you benefits, bonuses, titles. And for him, in turn, his superiors open the way to career growth and benefits.

Prosecutors and judges are well aware of everything. All that is required of the investigators is not to leave obvious traces of their "work". And the rest is all on the ointment. If they get caught, they, without any remorse, will sue our brother in such a way that it will not seem enough. Those Chechen prisoners who do not break down and refuse to give the testimony necessary to the investigators are taken to prisons in Irkutsk, Vladimir, Kirov, Sverdlovsk, Krasnoyarsk, Omsk regions, Karelia and Khakassia.

In these zones, there are "press squads", or quarantine squads. The "press squads" include prisoners - murderers and thieves with a bouquet of articles. Prison administrations create preferential conditions and an easy life for them. They have their own gyms, in the same place, in the colony. A large number of transfers from the outside are allowed, cigarettes, booze, drugs, women, TV, mobile phones. In addition to lighter conditions of detention, the administration writes good characteristics for them and puts them on parole - parole.

What else can you do to help prisoners you think are innocent?

- I provide telephones, medicines, food, warm clothes. Many are very sick and suffer from cold. I help to take revenge on the lawless people from the press hut. Well, I myself put spokes in the wheels of those bastards as best I can.

- What do you think, is it possible to review the criminal cases in which thousands of Chechens were convicted?

- Possible under one condition. If the Putin regime collapses, and the military will be deprived of their ranks, positions and brought to trial. Not only current ones, but also former ones who are on a "deserved rest". For them, this Chechnya has become manna from heaven. Now it's not even about Putin alone. The system feels impunity and has lost touch with real life. They will only save their own, and then only for the sake of selfish interest. To not pull everyone along. Even if you remove the top, the situation in prison will not change immediately.

We really need to think about this issue. If they start reviewing the cases, the most nimble and tenacious bastards will climb forward. The administration writes good characteristics on them. And bureaucracy is pieces of paper, a long and slow process. These guys are bad, really bad. Here we are talking now, and at this moment they are being tortured, raped and tortured. If they are not tortured, then they are in the ShIZO. Do you know how things are in Russian prisons? Murderers, thieves and repeat offenders help to break the innocently convicted so that they sign confessions. And they go out on parole and in the wild again kill and rob.

- In the wild it is difficult to convince: what you are telling is true and is this really happening?

- Yes, that's not the point. Who will force the Kremlin to pay attention to the Chechen prisoners today? Who needs them?