In unity and concord, our society is moving towards the abyss, led by the blind and those who deliberately stir up a "patriotic" and "anti-Caucasian" hysteria. A new puppet ruler has been appointed for Chechnya; the army is on the move. The land operation will begin successfully and then encounter serious problems. Even in the small victorious war21 in Daghestan our losses were officially 250 dead and 750 wounded out of the 5,000 taking part. By December we shall face the choice: either we conclude a new agreement with Chechnya or, knee-deep in blood, we shall wade towards a "final solution" of the Chechen problem, "using every type of contemporary weapon to physically destroy Chechnya", as some of our passionate commentators now demand.
The other day our Prime Minister [Vladimir Putin], who has a university education, amazed the entire country when he promised he would "corner the bandits in the shithouse and wipe them out". The Bolsheviks evidently had good reason for considering that ordinary criminals were "a socially close element". Freed of any ideological restraints, our leaders now speak the language of thugs and gangsters from our TV screens.
Novaya gazeta, 7 October 199922