«Война в Чечне. Люди» The War in Chechnya. People

“Women’s stomachs were cut open, the babies were taken out, the newborns were thrown into the fire right in front of their mothers…”

“The bodies, brought to us for burial were all mutilated, with traces of torture, with heads and hands cut off.”

“I had a neighbor called Maya. Her house was down there. People say they raped her and then hanged her on a poplar tree. I haven’t seen her body. The Tangievs too, they lived down there, very nice elderly family. They were both killed, their bodies burnt.  Their neighbor, a Jewish woman, was also killed, her head was cut off.”

“What does these kids have as memories? They ran either from the bombs, from the cleansings, or from the murders.  They remember how their parents were collecting water, how they collected snow, melting it to get drinkable water.  They remember that the dirty water that they drank was filtered through gauze and bandages. They remember that their neighbors were taken somewhere, not returning. They remember the drunken soldiers swearing at them at checkpoints.”

“One of my pregnant sisters was burnt together with the child…”

“We still have certain level of Soviet mentality, the brotherhood of nations, internationalism, we have been brainwashed that we were all brothers. Bullsh*t. We’ve seen the so-called brothers during Stalinism. But these youths have no such stamps, they are free. They see the naked truth, the harsh, crynical truth, they see and feel it. That is why these people will break the back of Russia. I am absolutely sure of it. “