They were dragging their wounded, calling for assistance to retrieve the bodies of those who had been killed. Kazantsev observed all this.
The final toll from that single treacherous bombing of the heights at 1500 hours by two SU-25 attack aircraft was eight dead and twenty-three wounded. Only one soldier was killed in combat with the Chechen fighters.
The overall losses of Interior troops in the course of Kazantsev's operation of September 9-10 were “over eighty men,” according to theinquiry. No further details are available. The soldiers of Major Yashin's doomed detachment were making their way back to their own lines for several days afterward. Alexander Slesarenko's body was returned to his home in Ryazan Province two weeks later, in a sealed coffin. The coffins were buried in the graveyards of Russia, and the state stuck into their grave mounds the very cheapest of memorials, an insult to the men who lie beneath them.
Overcoming her grief, Alexander's mother applied to the Basmanny court, within whose jurisdiction the Ministry of Defense lies. Judge Voz-nesensky directed the treasury to pay her 250,000 rubles [$8,700] in compensation. Needless to say, it did not come from the pocket of Kazantsev, who was by then a favorite of the president and Putin's personal representative in the North Caucasus. Kazantsev has been showered with medals, orders, and titles by Putin for his part in the so-called antiterrorist operation, for bringing Chechnya to the state the president wanted it in.
Judge Voznesensky is a young man, dynamic and modern, and doesn't clam up at the mention of administrative interference in the judicial process. He knows exactly what you are talking about. I know him well. He is brilliantly educated and peppers his conversation with Latin expressions, revealing a level of erudition unheard of among Russian judges. Voznesensky did not, however, delve too deeply into the details of Private Slesarenko's death, or indeed bother summoning that “Hero of Russia,” Gen. Viktor Kazantsev, to the courtroom.
So, once again, the taxpayers of Russia uncomplainingly pick up the tab for the second Chechen war and the idiocies of its generals, plus all the other expenditure on successive military escapades in the North Caucasus.
How long is this going to continue? The tragedy of the second Chechen war has been the launch pad for the stellar careers of all those implicated in it as comrades-in-arms of the present president. The more bloodshed, the higher they rise. So who takes responsibility? It simply does not matter how many people Kazantsev sends to their death; it does not matter how often he collapses drunkenly into the arms of others, includingjournalists. It is water off a duck's back. The only thing that matters in Russia today is loyalty to Putin. Personal devotion gains an indulgence, an amnesty in advance, for all life's successes and failures. Competence and professionalism count for nothing with the Kremlin. The system that has evolved under Putin profoundly corrupts officials, both civilian and military.
Alexander's mother tells me, “I shall never reconcile myself to the fact that my Sasha was sacrificed to a general's ambition. Never.”
January 15
In Moscow there is a fuss over a new history textbook. Members of United Russia are demanding that Putin require that “pride at the events” of the Russo-Finnish War of 1939 and of Stalin's collectivization of agriculture be included. They insist that our children should once more read a Soviet treatment of the Second World War and the supposedly positive role played by Stalin. Putin is going along with this. Homo sovieticus is breathing down our necks. Another textbook has meanwhile been banned for including the comment by academician Yanov that Russia is in danger of turning into a national socialist state armed with nuclear weapons.
Relatives of the Nord-Ost victims have a meeting at the procurator general's office in Moscow with Vladimir
The final toll from that single treacherous bombing of the heights at 1500 hours by two SU-25 attack aircraft was eight dead and twenty-three wounded. Only one soldier was killed in combat with the Chechen fighters.
The overall losses of Interior troops in the course of Kazantsev's operation of September 9-10 were “over eighty men,” according to theinquiry. No further details are available. The soldiers of Major Yashin's doomed detachment were making their way back to their own lines for several days afterward. Alexander Slesarenko's body was returned to his home in Ryazan Province two weeks later, in a sealed coffin. The coffins were buried in the graveyards of Russia, and the state stuck into their grave mounds the very cheapest of memorials, an insult to the men who lie beneath them.
Overcoming her grief, Alexander's mother applied to the Basmanny court, within whose jurisdiction the Ministry of Defense lies. Judge Voz-nesensky directed the treasury to pay her 250,000 rubles [$8,700] in compensation. Needless to say, it did not come from the pocket of Kazantsev, who was by then a favorite of the president and Putin's personal representative in the North Caucasus. Kazantsev has been showered with medals, orders, and titles by Putin for his part in the so-called antiterrorist operation, for bringing Chechnya to the state the president wanted it in.
Judge Voznesensky is a young man, dynamic and modern, and doesn't clam up at the mention of administrative interference in the judicial process. He knows exactly what you are talking about. I know him well. He is brilliantly educated and peppers his conversation with Latin expressions, revealing a level of erudition unheard of among Russian judges. Voznesensky did not, however, delve too deeply into the details of Private Slesarenko's death, or indeed bother summoning that “Hero of Russia,” Gen. Viktor Kazantsev, to the courtroom.
So, once again, the taxpayers of Russia uncomplainingly pick up the tab for the second Chechen war and the idiocies of its generals, plus all the other expenditure on successive military escapades in the North Caucasus.
How long is this going to continue? The tragedy of the second Chechen war has been the launch pad for the stellar careers of all those implicated in it as comrades-in-arms of the present president. The more bloodshed, the higher they rise. So who takes responsibility? It simply does not matter how many people Kazantsev sends to their death; it does not matter how often he collapses drunkenly into the arms of others, includingjournalists. It is water off a duck's back. The only thing that matters in Russia today is loyalty to Putin. Personal devotion gains an indulgence, an amnesty in advance, for all life's successes and failures. Competence and professionalism count for nothing with the Kremlin. The system that has evolved under Putin profoundly corrupts officials, both civilian and military.
Alexander's mother tells me, “I shall never reconcile myself to the fact that my Sasha was sacrificed to a general's ambition. Never.”
January 15
In Moscow there is a fuss over a new history textbook. Members of United Russia are demanding that Putin require that “pride at the events” of the Russo-Finnish War of 1939 and of Stalin's collectivization of agriculture be included. They insist that our children should once more read a Soviet treatment of the Second World War and the supposedly positive role played by Stalin. Putin is going along with this. Homo sovieticus is breathing down our necks. Another textbook has meanwhile been banned for including the comment by academician Yanov that Russia is in danger of turning into a national socialist state armed with nuclear weapons.
Relatives of the Nord-Ost victims have a meeting at the procurator general's office in Moscow with Vladimir
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