7 p. National Attitudes, the Chechen war used to break up the USSR

In August 1996, the Government appointed General Lebed to be in charge of the Chechen affairs, correctly assuming that he was bound to fail there. (A Guest Post)

First of all, the factors of the Soviet Breakup are so little understood in the west.  We think that the West won the cold war?

Second, I want to approach Dmitry Rogozin, as possibly a hidden voice in Russia.  He is not in Putin’s government.  He is not a compromiser, but not a hard-line reactionary either.  He is a “RESOLUTE Russian”.  Let’s see what that means

The breakup of the Soviet Union engendered an amazingly thoughtless side effect. It evicted 25 million Russian people into a series of ex-Soviet Republics.  All or most of these ex-republics gravitated toward the HATE of Russia, and countless atrocities against ethnic Russian.  There was no entity that sought to protect these people.  By Yeltsin’s actions and his results, he seemed to nurture the hatred, and all these revolts.

_________________

Lebed was left with no friends or advisers, and he decided to employ the same tactics in Chechnya as he had done in Moldova. The major difference was that Transniestria had been a part of Moldova, and Chechnya was a part of Russia. One could argue whether the result of Lebed’s actions in Transniestria met Russian national interests, but his actions in Chechnya were, beyond doubt, in direct contradiction with these interests.  (Fascinating, but 4,400 words long.)

“I can foresee plenty of criticism from hurrah-patriots and hurrah-democrats alike. I declare that our Internal Force Ministries will find out the residential addresses of such critics; the military will recruit them, and I will form the advance military units out of the critics, giving them an opportunity to fight at the front lines as much as they like. These squads will be led by the brave generals — deputies of the State Duma. Those who disagree with me or with the peace treaty may appeal to any instances, up to President and God himself. This war will stop. Those to put obstacles to that will be eliminated”. - Lebed

I could read insecurity and doubt underneath the intended harshness of Lebed’s words. He wished to put an end to the war in Chechnya NOT because he wanted to stop a waste of human lives: he just wished to liberate himself from the status of “Caucasian prisoner” as quickly as possible.

In a rush, Lebed allowed a wording in a preamble of the Khasavyurt Accords that was unacceptable within the framework of the Constitution: “…in accordance with international law the Parties agree…” Being the Secretary of the Security Council, Lebed should have known that international law regulated relations between sovereign states, not between a subject of a federation and the federal center. Thus, Lebed not only handed the total control over Chechnya to the separatists, but also officially acknowledged their state of independence. Secretary of the Security Council did not have a right to manage Russian sovereignty in such a reckless way, his past achievements in Russia’s favor notwithstanding.

On 24 September 1996 KRO issued a statement detailing the measures necessary to formalize the Peace Treaty in order to underline that our standing on the Khasavyurt Accords was different from that of General Lebed:

At that stage of the negotiations the following measures were required to enforce the Peace Treaty:

1) All reconstruction work in Chechnya must be suspended. The funds allocated for the reconstruction must be used for the purpose of paying compensation to citizens who suffered from the war, primarily to the refugees who lost their homes.

2) To relocate federal troops from mountainous and sub-mountainous regions, where they have become a target for warlords, to the Naursky and the Shelkovsky districts on the opposite bank of the Terek River. The troops are to be stationed there until the status of these territories is finally determined.

3) To declare the city of Grozny a disaster zone; to take all governmental institutions out of Grozny and appoint the temporary military commander to administer the city.

4) To form the temporary coalition government in the city of Urus-Martan or in the town of Shali with the purpose of the preparatory work to hold a people’s referendum and elections in which all citizens of the Russian Federation who have lived in the territory of Chechnya until 1991 will participate. Until the referendum and the elections are held, general governance is to be carried out by the Russian side, and the local governance is to be carried out by whichever side controls a particular settlement at the moment.

5) To ensure total evacuation of the non-Chechen population from the areas of crisis and to provide them with a temporary accommodation in the socially stable regions of Russia.

6) To carry out partial mobilization and to create the territorial army and the Cossack armed units around the areas that are under the separatists’ control.

7) To adopt a governmental social rehabilitation program for Russian refugees and forced migrants (which would include financial compensation, housing, employment, etc.)

In the event of the disruption of the Chechen crisis peaceful regulation, or if military actions against the Russian federal troops continue, the Government must declare the state of military emergency in the territory of Chechnya, as well as the state of emergency in Russia, and on that basis ensure complete breakup of the bandit units. In this case, the separatist leaders are to be prosecuted as war criminals and traitors.

The rebellious Chechen leaders are to be warned in advance that the current negotiations with them are final. They must know that no further negotiations will ever take place. They must know that their accomplices and supporters will be uncovered in any location in Russia and be deported to Chechnya at the least.

General Lebed held a different view and so he broke off with KRO almost entirely. He did not wish to think about the potential consequences of his actions and preferred to enjoy this state of “peace” instead. Later, the peace achieved on his terms would turn out to be worse than a war, for Russia.

The split with Lebed was very difficult for me. Being a son of a Russian general, I have always believed in the officer’s honor. I anticipated the coming of the Russian De Gaulle and considered Lebed to be the hope of the Russian patriotic movement. It was unbearably hard to admit to myself that I had been wrong. I wanted to check on things all over again and so decided to see the effect of the Khasavyurt Accords with my own eyes.

____________________

In October 1996, I flew over to Budyonnovsk together with my comrades-in-arms. We planned to get to Chechnya from there. A year had passed since the Basayev’s terrorist attack, and the life in that town in the Stavropol region still did not come back to normal. Citizens of Budyonnovsk were still grieving for their friends and relatives who had been killed in the hostage taking. We visited the cemetery that was filled with fresh flowers and wreaths.

In the two hours that we spent at our friend, the Militia Colonel Nikolai Lyashenko, we managed to meet members of the Russian refugee’s community and officers of the helicopter squad. The women refugees knew that we were about to travel to Chechnya. These women carried with them crumpled photographs of their children, mostly girls, who had gone missing, and they wanted us to take those photos to Chechnya. I did not know what to say. I was certain that the absolute majority of these teenage children were no longer alive, that they had been tortured and killed by “freedom fighters” turned into beasts, but how could I say such a thing to the mothers! Each one of those poor mothers will believe and hope as long as she lives that her child had miraculously escaped a terrible death and was alive somewhere out there….

We flew over to Grozny by helicopter. It was already dark when we landed in the Severny (“Northern”) Airdrome. Federal troops were still based in Khankal, and there were military quarters not far from the airport. The debris of Ichkerian aviation, destroyed by our Army in the first days of the attack on Grozny, were still visible on the take-off runway.

We were taken to see the military commandant. He received us very warmly, offered us tea and accommodation for the night. We declined the offer to stay, reasonably considering that it would be easier to drive in the night out of the city besieged by warlords.

Three Ladas full of Chechens waited for us at the first road checkpoint following the exit from the airport. I was fondly calling them “our tour guides”. They were the militants of grim disposition, skilled soldiers and guards, all from the mountainous region of Vedeno. All of them were blood relatives of Borz-Ali, a Chechen friend of mine from the university. Borz-Ali had offered me his help prior to our “inspecting visit” to the rebellious Republic and provided guards and guides for us. I had far greater trust in my friend’s reassurances of safety than I did in the declarations of Russian military commanders, who had been busy withdrawing federal troops from Chechnya under the Khasavyurt Accords.

At the commandant’s office the “tour guides” passed us a note via the patrol guards. It contained an instruction not to stay there overnight but to leave Grozny and its surrounding areas upon the descent of darkness. Despite the commandant’s continuous protests and offering us his armed guards and combat equipment, I decided to put ourselves at the trust of Borz-Ali’s people and leave quietly without causing unnecessary attention to ourselves. My experience in Transniestria and Bosnia did not go in vain. During a war one should keep a low profile and only wage a calculated risk, thus increasing chances of survival.

On the outskirts of the city a slender boy soldier, who had just been drafted, got out of his concrete hideout at the checkpoint. It was obvious that this guy, left on his own by his commanders in the forest full of blood-thirsty predators, was feeling lonely and scared. He addressed me: “Please, sir, on your way back, flicker your headlights four times. Otherwise, I’ll shoot.” He pronounced those words quietly but firmly, and I knew at once that should something go wrong, this soldier, a mere youngster, would not surrender. Russia fought in Chechnya with youngsters like him. Those yesterday’s schoolchildren had fought against seasoned bandits and foreign soldiers of fortune, and won.

We crossed the unpopulated ruins of Grozny within minutes and reached a rural road which led us to the village of Chechen-aul. There we had a bite to eat and went to sleep. I was put on a sofa in the living room. Two of the “guides”, fully dressed and with their guns in arms, stretched on the floor carpet in the same room.

In the morning our host, an elderly Chechen man, showed me the spot from which the cannons of Tsarist General Yermolov had fired at the man’s ancestors during the Caucasian War in the 19^th century. The old Chechen was talking with pride as if he had been firing those cannons personally. “They do respect Yermolov in Chechnya,” crossed my mind, “But they despise Yeltsin and today’s generals."

The day was spent in conversations with villagers of Shali and Novye Atagi. All the time I was looking out for traces of soldiers in captivity, trying to find out their scores and the places where they were being kept. In the afternoon we were granted a visit by Movladi Udugov himself, the ‘local Hebbels’, (as sneering Borz-Ali had commended him to me). Udugov was accompanied by a certain Isa, who was introduced to us as a “professor and key ideologist” of the Ichkerian regime. The two Chechens were inclined to philosophize immediately upon their arrival. They wanted to explain their views on Islam, war, and the prospects of relations of Caucasians with Russians and with Russia. If I had not been aware of the fact that my opponents represented an ideology of the cannibalistic Dudayev regime, then maybe I would have gladly followed a proffered line of discussion. But as things stood, I was talking to the “spiritual leaders” of Ichkeria and tried to understand just one thing; namely, how dangerous their views were? Could the metastases from Dudayev’s cancer spread beyond Chechnya and the Caucasus? Were those self-learners really capable of “shifting” the mainstream Islam in Russia; could they succeed in brainwashing Muslims in Russia, next to whom we, Russians, had lived peacefully for centuries and together with whom we were now building and defending our integral state?

By the end of the conversation Movladi Udugov admitted that Ichkerian leaders themselves were taken aback by the scale of betrayal on the part of the Russian officials. The latter frequently took initiative to pass some valuable information on to the rebels in exchange for a fee; the officials also came out with profitable commercial proposals. In turn, the warlords bought more weapons and more information out of the profits from such joint projects. It did not take much courage to pick on Russia of that kind. Yeltsin still sat in the Kremlin. The metaphorical “Russian bear” was asleep; everyone knew about it and took the liberty to rob and kill.

The meeting ended with a light squabble between Isa and my assistant Yura Maisky. “Professor” made a displeased gesture with his hand and got out of the table. When Udugov was saying good bye, he mentioned matter-of-factly that he was surprised to encounter “a man of such views”, meaning me, in the circle of General Lebed who was an esteemed man among the Ichkerian government. I took it as a compliment.

By the evening we were on the road again. We had to cross the mountains to visit the villages of Makhkety and Vedeno — Basayev’s sleeping quarters. There in Vedeno, I had my random encounter with Khattab, the commander of the Arab soldiers of fortune.

Our companions stopped the convoy in the center of that big village to pick up some of their people who were to meet the “president” of Ichkeria Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev. I got out of the car for a smoke and saw some odd-looking people in white coming out of a house across the street. At dusk they looked rather like ghosts. Then a man in black appeared at the door. He noticed our convoy and immediately walked in our direction. The man’s image was instantly familiar. It was Khattab — the notorious international terrorist, a religious fanatic and an intermediary financier through whom Saudi sheikhs were financing guerilla gangs in Chechnya. He had a face of a Bollywood star, and only his deepest black eyes betrayed his dark soul.

Khattab came up close to me and stared at me inquisitively. His body language spoke “look who is the master here."

It was incredible! The very man who had been chased all over the mountains by the Army Special Forces was standing right in front of me in flesh. He was not sitting in a dug-out or hiding behind bushes; he had not shaved off his beard or moustache not to be easily identified — oh, no! This lowlife who had killed dozens of our soldiers in Afghanistan and Chechnya was looking at me; he was not afraid of anything or anyone; he walked freely upon our land and felt quite at home there.

Apparently, the people in white whom I had noticed earlier were the listeners of Khattab’s “political information course”. Likewise, they were not in hiding and felt in control of the situation and of our land, upon which they had shed so much Russian and Chechen blood. Afterwards I felt sorry that I had not had a gun in my hands.

"You, Russian?” Khattab asked me in a heavy accent.

"Yes, I am Russian,” I replied.

"Why a Russian here?” the Arab said with a smirk.

At that point my facial expression must have changed because the “tour guides” who had been watching the scene, promptly, as if following a command, stepped in between the two of us. One of the guides opened the door of the car and gestured me in to take a back seat, whilst another said something to Khattab in a low voice in the Vainakh language. Then the guides jumped into the car, too, and ordered the driver to take off. Having shut the car doors, they unlocked the bolts of their guns and never took their eyes off the Arab and his militants, who did not move from the spot, until their silhouettes disappeared from our view.

That was how I got to know the Chechen hospitality law. These people were responsible for my life and I could be certain that this was not just a figure of speech. “Khattab is really a merciful man. He took pity on many Russian soldiers,” one of the guides said as if in justification. “Sure, he did,” was all I could say, and nobody spoke anymore through the rest of the journey to Starye Atagi.

Our meeting with “the president of Ichkeria” was furnished with pomposity. In the morning we were taken to a large villa where Yandarbiyev resided. The villa was patrolled by a couple of dozens of young guys in black uniform, armed up to their teeth. The patrol guards searched everyone with the exception of myself and my assistant Yury Maisky, together with whom we had wandered through a good half of Bosnia in our time. Of short height, robust and square-built, this Yura from Simferopol could easily be taken for a Chechen. During our stops for meetings with various Ichkerian “authorities” Yura showcased his martial art in front of the admiring Chechen fighters. Yura elicited instant respect from them. No warlord could withstand his direct stare, and he had no equals when it came to martial fighting. The Ichkerian presidential security, too, did not dare to bother Yura, and so he managed to smuggle one or two guns to our meeting with “the King of the Jungle”.

Prior to that rendezvous I saw Yandarbiyev only on television. I remember once watching a disgraceful scene, when a Chechen delegation, headed by my vis-à-vis, had somehow made Yeltsin sit not at the head of the table during their meeting, as befits a president of a great power, but opposite them as if they were his equal partners.

I have noted long ago that there are quite a few romantic souls among criminals and Nazis. For example, Adolf Hitler liked to paint pictures, Jaba Ioseliani was a Master of Arts, Zviad Gamsakhurdia fancied himself as a “creative intellectual” and Vytautas Landsbergis is a keen musician. Yandarbiyev was of the same kind — he wrote poetry. It is a shame that we never got around to reciting poems together during our meeting.

The “president” was overtly attentive to me; he was talking sweetly and slowly and tried very hard to make himself understood correctly. The point that he wanted to establish was that Chechens wished to live separately from Russia but, at the same time, did not want to be exiled. I objected that it did not work like that — if Chechens desired to build their own separate state, they had to recall all their compatriots back into Chechnya. No matter how hard Yandarbiyev was trying to maintain calm presence, it was obvious that he was annoyed by our conversation.

I was deliberately talking in a low voice; because of that, my opponent was leaning towards me from time to time which was making him remember my words better. The meeting finished with Yandarbiyev solemnly promising to do his best to stop the persecution and bullying of the Russians in the Republic; to get in contact with the leaders of the Russian community in Chechnya (it was actually they who asked me to see the “president”), and to adhere to the demands of the Russians citizens from Grozny who were eager to leave the territory of Chechnya in the shortest terms possible. I knew the true “value” of his promises but at least they were a proof that Yandarbiyev had heard me.

Somewhere in central Grozny, when we were on our way back to the airport, I asked the driver to stop by a semi-destroyed Orthodox church. Three elderly Russian women were quietly sitting inside. At the altar an Orthodox priest was busy cleaning dust and rubble off the tall icons. The icons were shot throughout from machine guns. The priest told us that there were still many Russians in the city, and that the general mood was suppressed because of the ongoing withdrawal of the Russian Army. People were at a loss; they did not know how to leave Chechnya, or where to go. Many of the Russians did not have a choice as they could not move their sick and elderly and could not leave them behind. In short, these were the most tragic circumstances.

As we were talking, suddenly a piece of metal fell down on the ground a meter away from us making a loud noise. What struck me the most was that the women, and even the cats that were asleep at the women’s feet, did not move a muscle. People and animals had become so used to the continuous ambient noise of explosions, shooting and bombing that they stopped paying attention to loud sounds altogether.

In the Severny Airdrome our helicopter was ready to take off. Just as we were about to take our seats, a sergeant came up running to tell me that the commandment asked us to delay our departure.

We went to the third floor of the Airdrome office building where the temporary Army Headquarters were located. A few senior officers, two generals and some hot tea awaited us. The officers wanted to know how our trip to the mountainous regions went. I gave them the detailed report of everything that we had seen. One of the generals was very interested; he convinced us to stay for a bit longer, ordered to send our helicopter back to the base in Khankal and prepare another helicopter to take us to Mozdok. At home I learned that the helicopter that we were supposed to take was shot down by the warlords.

Finally, we parted with the commandant and loaded into a “cow”, which is a nickname for a huge helicopter MI-26. The helicopter was packed with the Special Forces fighters going back home. The atmosphere was not cheerful; nobody spoke during the whole flight. A truck, parked beside the helicopter, was being loaded with bodies of dead soldiers, wrapped in cellophane.

“Who are they?” I asked a young lieutenant.

“They’re our guys”.

“But the war is over, isn’t it?”

“For your Lebed yes, the war is over,” he said through gritted teeth. There was hatred in his voice.

So that was how my first trip to Chechnya ended. Along with it ended my friendship with Alexander Lebed — the ex-Commander of the 14^th Army, former Deputy Chairman of the Congress of Russian Communities, and a former candidate for Russian presidency.

An extract from the KRO’s Declaration dated 2 March 1997:

The efforts of traitors and defectors of the Motherland and the endeavors of bureaucrats in power, who had lost their mind, honor and conscience, led to one of the most humiliating defeats in Russia’s history — the defeat in the Chechen War.

It was a war in which the Government, the mass media, and at times even the top military officials fought against their national army. They repeatedly undermined all chances for victory by our Armed Forces. Russians failed to make their government act in that war in the best interests of the nation.

The war now ceased purely because the Russian and the global shadow market entities are profiting from the state of war less, than they do from the existing conditions, under which the control over the Chechen Republic is being exercised by the unlawful militant groups. The expansion of instability zones into the North Caucasus is in direct correlation with the interests of oil monopolies that have been spoon-feeding Chechen bandits.

The political clandestine confederacy of bureaucrats and criminals, combined with the fake elections held in Chechnya, resulted in the present situation when not a single issue of the Russian-Chechen relations has been resolved. On the contrary, the conflict is escalating further.

KRO is forced to affirm its position: the guilt of Chechen separatists and rebels who brought great suffering onto the Russian people will not be purged until all those responsible for killings, theft, enslavement and forceful evictions are punished; until the last terrorist is captured and each and every refugee received due compensation for the losses incurred.

KRO does not recognize the legitimacy of the elections of the Chechen president because the Russian citizens were evicted from their land and excluded from participation in these elections. KRO considers Aslan Maskhadov to be not a president nor a governor, but a rebel and a thief who must be arrested and subjected to trial without delay. We will officially deem any action directed at securing his status as president of the Chechen Republic to be an act of betrayal of Russian national interests.

KRO deems it necessary to establish a measure of liability for the individuals who allowed Russia’s defeat in her fight against rebels. Those who rendered direct or indirect support to the terrorists and the rebels; those who undermined the fighting ability of the Russian Armed Forces; those who carried out propaganda against federal troops in Chechnya must all be called to justice.

Until betrayal and banditism are fully punished, KRO will not agree with the notion that the Chechen War became history.

The Congress of Russian Communities adopted that Declaration at the assembly in January 1997. By that time all the “prominent military figures,” “promising economists,” and “major statesmen and politicians” had already deserted KRO. But our conscience, dignity and faith in our just cause remained with us even in the most complicated of times.

The Caucasus was on fire. The Balkans were aflame, too. The hearts of Russian patriots were burning with them. The struggle for Russia had only just begun.

.