Q. But the war really will end and then everyone will have to adapt and live according to peacetime rules.
A. You know what, let's finish the war first. Then we'll see by whose rules we are going to live! Things are not that obvious in Russia today. Our self-awareness, which is gaining a stronger hold on us, means that if the rules are holding us back they must be changed.
LIEUTENANT-GENERAL VLADIMIR SHAMANOV
JUNE 2000
The nation must no longer be left stranded half-way; no longer must it be deceived by this "independence" and "liberty" that no one has ever actually given us and never will. Freedom, in fact, is something the ordinary man – and I count myself one, I come from a very modest peasant family – does not need. He needs work and in return a wage and security.
AHMAD-HADJI KADYROV
JULY 2000
Soon a year will have passed since the atrocity in Novye Aldy, a Nazi-style massacre of modern-day Russia. There has been no investigation. During the entire eleven months since it happened, the witnesses have not once been questioned. No one has presumed to create photofit pictures of the criminals, though certain of the killers did not hide their faces.
ANNA POLITKOVSKAYA
JANUARY 200I