30 September 1999
If it had not been for the fighting in Daghestan the two of us might never have met: the tinned meat of the Semikarakorsk meat-processing plant and my digestive system.
It was getting near suppertime and the men of the Lipetsk Region OMON [riot police] who were off-duty invited me into their improvised kitchen. They are currently based in the Kazbekovsk district next to the Chechen border, and are guarding the approaches to Dylym, the main town in the area. I should have been warned by the mysterious winks and smiles they exchanged.
The kitchen turned out to be in a cellar, down two dark flights of stairs. The lower we descended, the greater my reluctance: the foul stench rising to meet us suggested that chemical weapons had been used not far away.
"May I offer you a gas mask?" a pleasant young man asked.
"You're most kind, but if you can take it, so can I."
"Oh, you mustn't compare yourself with us, we're already used to it."
At that moment we reached our destination and the dishevelled character in charge of the kitchen came into view. With a knife he was opening one after another of the latest rations from the Semikarakorsk plant. They had received them the day before from the OMON quartermaster at the food depot in Kizlyar. Plunging his blade through the pliable aluminium he counted aloud:
". . . Tin 23, rotten. Tin 39, likewise. Tin 41, the same . . . That's enough! Tin 42 is for you. Take it back to Moscow and show them what they feed us. Perhaps you'd like me to disembowel it here and now, so there's no mistake?"
"Better not," jokes Alexander Pavlovich Ponomaryov, the lieutenant colonel in charge of these Interior Ministry forces (to them he is simply Pal'ich), "everyone on the plane might die before the tin reaches the capital of our great country. Try a sample of what they regularly serve us."
I sniffed and licked. What else could I do? My organism reacted instantly.
"We have stomach infections all the time," concluded Pal'ich. "And that's the condition we fight in."
"But do you have enough to treat it? Did they give you anything?"
"Medicine, you mean? Not really. We're chronically short of everything here."
I pulled out all of the anti-diarrhoea tablets I'd taken with me on the trip and handed them over to Colonel Ponomaryov. Then I decided to investigate local life and its chronic shortages.
Food Fit for Heroes
This unit of the Lipetsk OMON is already famous throughout Daghestan. They are in charge of the Kazbekovsk section of the cordon sanitaire that runs along the Chechen-Daghestani border and they recently performed a feat of heroism. In early September they were guarding the small town of Novolakskoe. With them were the town's fearless policemen and an army unit under the command of Infantry Major Zhenya (in Daghestan officers do not introduce themselves, even to fellow officers). At one point it became clear that things were going badly and the bandits would soon have the area completely surrounded. No one wanted to die. So while there was still a way out of the town, Major Zhenya grabbed an armoured personnel carrier and drove away from the fighting, leaving his own soldiers and the policemen to their fate, and to almost certain death.
"Why didn't you save yourselves and run?"
"We had wounded men with us."
When resistance became almost futile and they faced capture or death, the Lipetsk OMON decided to break through enemy lines. Of course, they had almost no chance of getting through alive. It was simply a case of despair, resentment, and a desire to live. Guided by their senses, they crawled out at night, stealthily and silently, tracing a great arc across Chechen territory, beyond the surrounding fighters, where death waited behind each hill.
Discussing their feat of bravery in that stench-ridden kitchen only sharpened everyone's perceptions. How could people who have shown such bravery in impossible circumstances and, weeks later, continue to face mortal danger every day, now be living like stray dogs that no one cares for? Is this how the Motherland repays their valour?
The next subject proved highly sensitive for these resentful people whose nerves have been stretched to the limit. The Lipetsk OMON escaped from encirclement in worn and tattered clothes. What was left when they reached freedom could have gone straight on the fire. But did anyone hurry to issue them with new uniforms? The military quartermasters now running Daghestan did not even blink. Instead they had to rely on their well-disposed comrades to cover their nakedness.
Their heroism was not reflected in their pay, either. Prime Minister Putin may frequently offer the nation therapeutic TV sessions, but the OMON are still getting a mere 22 roubles a day [about $0.70, Tr.], and there's no hope of any more. Not for them the $1,000 the Chechen fighters are supposed to get each month! It makes no difference whether you're a hero, or a Major Zhenya. Pal'ich supposes that somewhere, perhaps in Makhachkala, at staff headquarters, some of the generals may already be doing quite nicely. On the front line, here in Dylym, where they expect the Chechen fighters to break through again at any minute, no one has seen any extra money.
Hence their hungry existence. They live little better than savages and our beloved country blows the smell of tainted meat in their faces. The Lipetsk OMON men are greeted by this stench in place of supper and can expect nothing else. There are no street-side kiosks here, only ravines and mountains, and even if they could buy something to eat they have no money. If it were not for the tins from Semikarakorsk then the Motherland would be offering its heroes nothing more than gruel. When the local women notice how thin the soldiers defending them are, they bring them food out of the kindness of their hearts.
Alexander Ponomaryov, their commanding officer, is 42 and 27 of those years he has devoted to the army. His shoulders constantly twitch and jerk, from the cold and from a nervous tic. He huddles up in his shapeless old sweater and is sunk in melancholy. His life, for the most part, has been wasted, he believes, fighting difficult military campaigns for which the country has never even offered a grudging "Thank you."
"Do you know why you're fighting here?"
"Because of someone's political ambitions. And for 22 roubles a day. Otherwise everything would be different. You can see for yourself. The furthest post where our men are on duty is 15 kilometres from this barrack. If anything happens there we don't even have a car or the money to buy petrol – they don't supply one, it's not standard issue. So we run out into the road, flag someone down and ask for a lift. And what if it's night-time? Who can you ask here in the village? It's a joke. But when something happens you feel nothing but hatred for the powers that sent us here. As you can see, they have created all the necessary conditions for feats of heroism . . ."
Pal'ich laughs. Our dear Pal'ich who knows from bitter experience that the brisk reports delivered by the generals from morning to night on all the TV channels are very far from the truth here on the front line. At this point someone will certainly say to himself: What a green creature this Politkovskaya is! Just imagine, the tinned meat was off, and the colonel got emotional like some delicate college girl. Well, if you're sitting comfortably and safely in Moscow, then indeed there is little need to become overexcited. But if someone is aiming at you, every hour of every day down the barrel of a gun, and if you take your life in your hands simply by glancing out the window, then your nerves will be in quite a different state. The complaints about living conditions are entirely justified. If the country wants acts of bravery then it should give more practical expression to its rapture at such heroism. As long as the authorities think they can buy off their heroes with awards and decorations – and dozens are being proposed for decorations in Daghestan today – then the heroes will desert them.
Semikarakorsk
My two last phone calls were to Rostov-on-Don and Semikarakorsk. At supply headquarters for the North Caucasus Military District the answer was simple:
"The meat-processing plant in Semikarakorsk won the public tender. You can't hold us responsible. It's impossible to open every tin. When we made spot checks the results were good. All complaints to the producer."
In Semikarakorsk someone who describes himself as the plant director answers the phone. He is very evasive and lengthily assures me that these rumours are lies, nothing more than the newspapers trying to concoct a sensational story.
"But how much were you paid for these consignments to Daghestan?"
The moment money is mentioned the director turns nasty:
"Get lost. I'm not telling you," he snaps, "it's a commercial secret. We're a private company."
Then our Semikarakorsk butcher gets carried away. Like a real old-style Communist he tells me that the soldiers have become too demanding, they are asking for the impossible and should be more modest. The Motherland "is in no fit condition . . . Do you understand?" And a lot of other nonsense.
Finally I reach the end of my patience:
"You're a real bastard, aren't you? Are you really too thick to understand that your rotten meat may be the last thing one of those young soldiers ever eats?"
There is an unpleasant, disparaging laugh:
"Fax us your questions and if we see the necessity, we'll provide answers." Without a word of farewell he slams down the receiver.
You want to know his name, of course. The businessman I was talking to is called Igor G. Lisakonov. And if you wish to personally express your revulsion at a scoundrel who has been turning a pretty penny from these tainted supplies then you may ring him on the following telephone numbers: Rostov (886356-2) 13-94 or 14-94. Perhaps then he'll finally get the message.
At all times and under all regimes wars have been profitable business. While others carried the dead off the battlefield, the quartermasters and their kind in supplies were lining their pockets. The longer the war, the fatter their wallets. The more soldiers despatched to the front, the finer the Mercedes some ministry official can obtain.14 You tell me that the Chechens are to blame for our troubles. Don't worry, we're doing quite well on our own.
A Minefield
Today more than a dozen unexploded bombs, dropped from the air, lie about the churned-up mess that is Novolakskoe. They didn't go off, unfortunately, because they were rather old; someone says they were made in the 1950s. Naturally people returning to their homes asked the military to remove these dangerous and unpredictable lumps of metal as quickly as possible. The soldiers replied that the bombs could not be safely moved and must be detonated where they are. The explosive force of each bomb, they added, lowering their gaze, is equivalent to that which demolished the high-rise block in Buinaksk.15 Did no one think of that before? Now Novolakskoe will acquire a dozen large craters and suffer extensive new destruction. People are horrified.
That's how our soldiers are living at the front. No one cares for their safety and they are forced to stroll past unexploded bombs all of the time. One bomb waiting to explode is their semi-starved existence; another is the lack of normal warm clothing; a third is their miserable wages; a fourth . . . Do the authorities really not foresee the consequences? Do they expect people who have served in these conditions to return home, calm and confident, convinced they are real heroes?
An armoured personnel carrier races through the maize-fields along the road that borders the cordon sanitaire. It is full of soldiers. An officer leaps out and introduces himself: "Colonel N." All of them here say that: Colonel N., Major N. and so on. Among themselves the officers say that if they give their surnames the Chechens will find their families "in Russia" and wreak vengeance on them. The colonel is in a highly nervous state. Restlessly he struts back and forth, twitching and sometimes breaking into a run; he gives an odd and unbalanced impression. At his command the soldiers point their weapons at everyone who isn't in uniform or riding in an army vehicle. No one trusts anyone else here and they're all afraid of each other.
That's how we now behave, yet the land around is part of our country, it's not a fascist, gangster-run republic. We created this situation. Only officers who are daily shown how little they count could behave in this way.
MAKHACHKALA-DYLYM