29 November 1999
This should have been a profoundly optimistic report describing the successful evacuation, under bombardment, of the inhabitants of the old people's home in Grozny. For the last month and a half, our newspaper has spent every day preparing this complex operation. A permanent team was formed and it worked to gain the goodwill and assurances of the General Staff and the Ministry of Defence. Meanwhile readers helped us to collect enough money for guides and coaches. (No one would do a thing without payment – it proved quite unrealistic to expect that – and we discovered that government departments had no funds to spend on such activities.)
At long last, a date and time were agreed.
What then happened was shameful, and we can offer readers no words of consolation. The fighters defending the Chechen capital suddenly realised that the federal authorities placed a certain value on these old people. So they simply turned them into hostages. How and why will become clear from what follows.
Here and Now
The last week we had been full of hope. Leaving home and family, all our energy and determination went on ensuring that no later than 10 a.m. on 25 November, our long-awaited red Icarus coach would return from Grozny to the Chechen-Ingush border. There, at the "Caucasus" checkpoint on the Rostov-Baku Highway, we would meet "our old people". Then we would escort these sick and lonely old men and women, whose lives began with a war and were closing with two more, back to a peaceful and quiet existence.
25 November arrived. At 10 a.m. so did our Icarus. But instead of the old people, the guides brought us a written note. It said, in effect, that the local authorities had forbidden the evacuation. The Chechen guides, who only a few days before had been so courageous and admirable, sat uneasily before us. They fidgeted. They gave muddled explanations about the people who had been there to meet them when they reached the old people's home. Finally they passed on the following verbal message: the journalists were expected at the home tomorrow morning and then, perhaps, they might let the elderly go.
"Who's expecting us there?"
"The people who didn't let the old ones leave today."
Ruslan Koloyev's drawn face darkened. He had welcomed, and then nursed through, the entire operation, and in its final stages, as Ingushetia's Deputy Minister for Emergency Situations, he had shouldered the main burden. Powerless, he stood and silently left us. He was gone for a long time, at least half an hour. We were stunned. As we waited our guides told us more of the fantastic tales they had been spun by those thugs. Finally Ruslan's absence became a reproach. I went to find him.
"Where's Ruslan?"
"He's praying," his colleagues quietly replied.
Ruslan is a devout Muslim. But you'd never know it. Not a single word, look or movement betrays his inner faith, let alone demonstrative green bandannas or cries of "Allahu Akbar!" Ruslan returned from his prayers to our room, sent out the talkative guides and said: "Last night I already knew this was going to happen. Only a miracle could have changed things."
And this, day by day, is how it came about.
On 23 November, following a carefully agreed route, the Icarus coach left for Grozny. It was to go to 194 Borodin Street in the city's Staropromyslovsky district, where the old people's home was located. We had already sent volunteers there several times before to investigate and test the ground. Each time the story was the same. The old people were exhausted and starving, all the staff had long ago run away, no one had any money and those who could still move went out in the streets begging. We must hurry. Since the end of September, while the Moscow bureaucrats idled their time away, twelve of the old people had died. There were now only 85 left.
Finally the evening of 24 November arrived. Anticipating a happy end, I could hardly wait. Then, like a bucket of cold water, at 9.30 p.m., following the main evening news, came the Channel One TV programme Here and Now. The presenter, Alexander Lyubimov, was talking to Sergei Kalashnikov, the Minister of Labour and Social Development.33 Kalashnikov is in charge of homes for the elderly throughout Russia, and whenever we needed his support he had unfailingly obstructed us, doing everything to ensure that the old people in Grozny never crossed the border into Ingushetia. His greatest concern was about the issue's "political aspects" and he was determined to ensure that no solitary Chechen pensioners would somehow be included in the mission.
The interview went roughly as follows (I'm reporting not the exact words, but the fatal message they sent). One, the elderly had been evacuated from Grozny. Two, the Ministry of Labour had been working long and stubbornly to achieve this goal. Three, the successful outcome was the result of an undercover operation by the Russian government on the territory of the Chechen Republic.
More of a public slap in the face for our operation would be hard to imagine. You already know the rest. The guides then came back and told us they had been forbidden to evacuate the elderly from Chechnya.
26 November. From early morning the following day, as informed army officers had repeatedly warned us, Grozny was subjected to the most powerful artillery and aerial bombardment of the present war. Moreover, the shells were falling precisely on the Staropromyslovsky district where the old people's home was. We had been in such a hurry because the military had told us: "After the 26th it will be too complicated. Get a move on."
But surely, you are saying to yourself, a government minister like Kalashnikov must have known as much as journalists and senior officers? Of course, he knew. That's exactly why, perhaps, he took the risk and, from midday on 25 November, began to issue quite false claims over the wires of the Itar-TASS news agency that the elderly had been successfully evacuated. As he knew only too well, it would be very dangerous to go and check whether these announcements were true or not. Later that day he repeated his cheap lies live on Channel One TV. Guided by the overriding principle that "War justifies everything", Kalashnikov was evidently quite happy to abandon the old people's home to bombardment from the ground and skies. He also had reasons of his own.
The minister was covering his tracks using every means at his disposal. And, considering his status within the government, he had access to some significant means. Throughout 1997 and 1998 Kalashnikov's ministry had poured money from the federal budget into that same old people's home. Funds were transferred from Moscow, and no account of their expenditure was demanded. At the ministry they were well aware that not a rouble was being spent for the purpose intended. The money went on presents – not to the elderly, but to members of Maskhadov's government. As a result, the home was ruined and abandoned by its staff, with no one left to feed the elderly or give them essential medicine.
The money was siphoned off and Labour Ministry officials knew exactly where it was going, because they had punctiliously ensured it reached its destination. If the elderly left Chechnya, however, there would now be living testimony of this embezzlement of state funds. For Kalashnikov and those who actually made the transfers this spelled ruin. That's why he took the risk.
The following scenario is, in my view, highly probable. On the day the guides and our coach appeared in Grozny, Kalashnikov was alerted from Chechnya (despite all that people say, lines of communication remain open). He was warned that the evacuation was about to begin and asked to take measures. And he acted. On the very evening the guides were in Grozny this fact was publicly announced on television. It was the equivalent of saying: "At this very moment American intelligence agents have entered the Kremlin and are trying to steal top secret documents ..."
The lives of these lonely and helpless old people finally lost any value of their own. They had become no more than a means to an end.
A Powerless State
The moral of this story is that the State does not exist in Russia. We have been hearing a great deal of talk from Prime Minister Putin, in the run-up to the forthcoming Duma elections. They are building a powerful State, he tells us, to take the place of the once great superpower. But the State led by this premier does not exist. The Russian Federation is a case-study in total and irreversible impotence.
That vacated arena is now filled with the ambitions of some, and the laziness and indifference of others; some publicise their ludicrous stupidity, others tell barefaced lies, while idiocy is raised to the level of government policy, and all are guilty of a slovenly inefficiency.
The evidence is here, before your eyes. This was a tiny and quite specific case that demanded specific and exclusively humanitarian action – it did not require the authorities to mobilise the army and send in tanks and armoured personnel carriers. But the State sets no value on such people. The situation has become quite intolerable. What earthly use to me is the Putin we see, prancing about on TV and telling us that he's going to "wipe out" the bandits after they're cornered "in the shithouse"?
I want a Putin who will defend the weak – according to the Constitution our State exists, first and foremost, for the good of the people. Give me a Putin who at least can control his ministries. Let's have a Putin who does not kow-tow to the army, police and security service, but instead appeals to ordinary citizens: to the people who are suffering and dying under bombardment, as though they are at the mercy of blood-crazed terrorists! I want a different Putin. Not the man who, in front of the TV cameras, climbed into the cockpit of a bomber wearing a pilot's helmet that was evidently the wrong size, but someone who will go to the Staropromyslovsky district and visit the Grozny old people's home.
Isn't it strange, though, that a newspaper whose job it is to provide information, should so persistently shoulder the functions of the government? Why should journalists do the job we pay ministers to do? Obviously because the authorities with the same stubborn persistence refuse to carry out their duties. As soon as ministers are appointed they are cosseted and protected from popular pressure. Their power and privilege is all that interests them.
The only reason we started this operation was because not one official could be found in the entire State who would do the job for us or without our help. We acted because there was no alternative and because the State was immobile and indifferent. And, at the same time, we were perfectly aware that we could not take the place of those authorities and that this situation was public proof of the State's absence.
The end result was that, while we were doing Kalashnikov's job, he started doing ours. He suddenly became hyperactive and began posing as a journalist. He was convinced that anyone could do the job. He was mistaken. A journalist is above all someone who does not lie and will check facts many times before risking an error.
Our Colleagues
I also observed the behaviour of our colleagues in the media during this crisis. Their only interest in our operation was to capture some dramatic events. "You create some news for us, and then we'll react," was their principle. From morning onwards they came up to us in Nazran and asked: "Are the buses going to come? You couldn't be more precise about the time so that we can be sure to broadcast live?" Not once did we hear an offer of help. The only news team that became truly involved and lived through the entire tragedy of the last few days with us as if it concerned them personally were the camera crew from Channel One TV, led by correspondent Olga Mezhennaya.
All attempts to interest Western (or our own) human rights organisations in the fate of these helpless old people from Grozny were also futile. Today such organisations are based in Ingushetia and mainly engaged in the theoretical defence of human rights. The practical side of things does not greatly worry them. The majority are enthusiastically collecting information about mass infringements of Chechen human rights. They can be seen every day in contact almost exclusively with representatives of the Chechen parliament and other similar organisations.
When it became clear that the elderly were being held in Grozny by Chechen fighters, people representing a powerful and influential organisation such as Human Rights Watch did not show the faintest desire to help. Every day they issued press releases about the Russian army's acts of genocide (also undeniable) against the Chechen people. There is a thorough filtering of information to serve a single point of view. If it's a question of a press release, based on Chechen accounts, about the shelling of the Samashki psychiatric hospital, then they are only too happy to oblige and very quick about it. They have no intention, though, of writing and despatching to New York a press release about the inhuman ban on the evacuation of elderly people from Grozny, a ban imposed by Maskhadov's followers who have long since sent their own families to Ingushetia. Sad as it is, that is the fact of the matter.
What Next?
Clever people, including some in the government, have told us that following Kalashnikov's public statements there is now almost no chance of evacuating the elderly from Grozny. The only hope of saving anyone is to make a personal appeal to Basayev.
And that says it all. Basayev has more influence over the fate of our fellow citizens than Putin. It's a vicious circle. The old people must forgive us, but we cannot bring ourselves to appeal to the Conqueror of Budyonnovsk, a man who held the mothers of the maternity hospital there hostage, and ask him to take pity on these lonely old men and women. In my mind the images of Kalashnikov and Basayev are now totally blurred and confused. (The latter's beard makes no difference.)
You can see where all this is leading. By tolerating such things on our own doorstep and allowing the State's officials to perform these acts of violence against us we shall very soon have our own Pinochet. We shall be so relieved, in fact, when he comes that we'll throw ourselves at his feet, and beg him to save us.
INGUSHETIA
POSTSCRIPT
The editors would like to thank all who tried to help us perform this mission of conscience and duty. Their names are listed in order of the magnitude of their personal contribution, starting with those who did most: Ruslan Koloyev, Deputy Minister, Ingushetia Ministry for Emergency Situations (MES); Yury Shum, Head of the North Caucasus Regional Centre, Federal MES; Valery Kuksa, Minister, Ingushetia MES; Tugan Chapanov, Section Head, Ingushetia MES; Marina Kurkieva, Deputy Minister of Labour and Social Development, Ingushetia; Anatoly Khrulyov, CO of the "Caucasus" checkpoint; Ruslan Aushev, President of Ingushetia; Yevgeny Gontmakher, Department Head for Social Development, Russian government; Valery Vostrotin, Deputy Minister, Federal MES; and Valentina Matvienko, Deputy Prime Minister, Russian government.