Time for a discussion of Anna Politkovskaya, because why not
I already have a book blogging project going on, but another wouldn't hurt.
Anna Politkovskaya was a journalist referred to as Russia's lost conscious. She fiercely reported on the Second Chechen War. This began due to apartment bombings in the late 1990s that from what I know, have zero evidence of Chechen involvement. I think most of us on this site are familiar with Putin and Ukraine, but I think we need to go back further and discuss Chechnya. Putin used this as an excuse to start war in Chechnya. In her reporting of it, she describes, at length, the targeting of civilians. One example that sticks out to me is when she describes Russian soldiers opening fire on a family celebrating New Year's. A five year old girl was the only survivor and was left permanently disabled.
Another family described being permitted to return to their homes by Russian authorities only to be targeted by soldiers themselves. A five year old girl was left permanently disabled as a result.
Politkovskaya also discusses how the wars altered gender roles in Chechnyan society. In particular, female suicide bombers rose in numbers as a means to fight against Russian armies. Politkovskaya suggested Russia should withdraw their fight on Chechnya and pay for the medical care of Chechnyan citizens and reconstruction of Chechnyan infrastructure as compensation as a means to prevent future suicide bombers. She doesn't downplay extremism within Chechen society, but she points it would not have developed to the extent that it did had Russia not started war in the region.
She also discusses at length, a meeting in London between the Chechens and Russians to end the war with the Chechens' proposals being shot down. And Politkovskaya takes the UN and international community to task over their unwillingness to condemn Russia for starting the war using a terrorist bombing the Russians themselves likely staged. So much of what Politkovskaya discusses mirrors today's Ruscist logic about Ukraine. It's quite uncanny, down to the lack of willingness to really take Russia to task for it.
What is also interesting is Russia's backing of the Kadyrovs, while both religious and secular leaders within Chechnya opposed them. Ramzan Kadyrov ran a corrupt kangaroo court that convicted people against him. Akhmet Kadyrov was incredibly unpopular amongst his fellow politicians and the public, yet only retained power owing to Vladimir Putin backing him. Politkovskaya points out that he spent more time in Moscow kissing up Putin rather than in Chechnya actually governing. Meanwhile, the majority of Chechens were living in shacks with no running water and looking for lost relatives or having to bribe officials to get information on their relatives or a body.
So there's multiple generations of Chechens lost to Russia. First in the Chechen Wars, and now in Ukraine as the majority of Russian casualties are ethnic minorities within Russia. As for Ramzan Kadyrov, he could honestly get a post dedicated solely to him because of how purely depraved he is. The one that sticks out to me was the reveal of a series of videos that showed Ramzan being involved in the savage beating of Chechen civilians, and another that showed that he enjoyed abusing this man who was drugged and coerced into pulling his pants down on camera. She also discusses how far he went to cover up the rise in anti Kadyrov militias in Chechnya, Dagestan, and Ingushetia. These militias, referred to as jamaats, were not viewed as being as huge of a threat compared to Kadyrov.
Consider this: Politkovskaya was eventually murdered in 2006 for her reporting. Prior to this, she was likely poisoned on her way to Beslan in 2004. And after her murder, things only deteriorated further in Russia. She herself knew she would pay with her life for continuing to report on Chechnya, yet she still did it.
Here's a part of her book that stands out to me: She talks about the murder of Zelimkhan Murdalov, who was kidnapped by Russian state employees in early 2001. Murdalov's parents went through hell to get justice for their son and had to have their legal fees covered by Amnesty International instead of Russian civil rights groups. After an absolute shitshow of a trial, which was unexpected to begin with since the majority of Chechens who went missing never had their victimizers brought to justice and no one really expected them to, Sergey Lapin, one of the men involved, was sentenced. Politkovskaya focuses heavily on this because it illustrates that Murdalov was the exception in receiving some form of justice. The majority of Chechens who reported that their family members went missing during the Chechen Wars had no investigations done into their loved ones cases, let alone trials. Yet even despite being so exceptional, Murdalov's body was never found, and none of Lapin's other accomplices nor his superiors were ever brought to justice. There is evidence that suggests his superiors were on board with kidnapping Chechen men.
Then she discusses the Nord-Ost hostage crisis. An independent jamaat lead by Movsar Barayev broke into a Russian theatre performing the play Nord-Ost and took people hostage. Their ransom to be paid was a ceasefire in Chechnya. Politkovskaya was among those that negotiated with the terrorists for the hostages' release. While she believed the war needed to come to an end, she didn't agree with the methods the group used, obviously. After the crisis ended and the dead were buried, there were still unanswered questions. How did the terrorists get that far up into Russia? Why did so few Chechen officials pressure the terrorists into releasing the hostages? When the gas that was targeted for the terrorists released, was it deliberate or an accident? After this, Politkovskaya independently investigated this herself. She conducted an interview with a surviving terrorist, and from reading this interview it becomes clear there's a lot that doesn't add up at all. This particular man was named Khanpash Terkibayev, and as we get deeper into the book, we come to learn that he (ALLEGEDLY) is a Russian secret service agent. It's completely bonkers to read, in all honestly. Putin allegedly orchestrated all these terrorist attacks in his own country to justify genocide.
This rhymes again with Beslan. Only the president of Ingushetia attempted to negotiate to free the school children held hostage then, and he was severely punished by Putin as a result. When all these Chechen separatists are doing terrible acts, and no one can possibly think their own government is funding extremists to terrorize their own citizens and anyone who tries to bring it to light gets killed as Politkovskaya was in 2006, is it any wonder that it was easy to get an entire population of Russians to support the genocide of Ukrainians? This was all part of a slow boiling frog experiment, in a way. It had to start with genuinely horrific acts by extremists to get people to give up their freedom.
Politkovskaya doesn't hesitate to take Russia's citizens to task for their apathy in holding their government accountable. Compared to Ukrainians, who were fighting back around the same time, ordinary Russians seemed all too glad to look the other way. It only seems to have gotten worse as time goes on.
29 years ago the first Russian-Chechen war began. after 29 years in the war with the Russian occupiers, I am now the granddaughter of deportees, the daughter of a father who was tortured by the Russian occupiers and a sister of a brother who died in the battles for the independence of Ichkeria.
lazar/pain
Russia had brought immense pain to Chechnya and after being left unpunished - brought it to Ukraine too.
a Chechen boy after seeing Russian terrorist attack on Vinnytsia and little girl Liza said: I was killed in 2000 by a bomb and I have been leaving in a hell ever since.
xag/hatred
a soldier from the Sheikh Mansur battalion teaches me, a civilian women: we don't speak with the occupiers, we kill them.
remember the ruins of Grozny, kill the occupiers.
diccadalar/memory
grandmother, the “child of lentils”, who survived deportation, two wars and died under the Russian occupation, had forgotten everything in the last two years of her life—everything at all. all the pain and all the horror that Russia brought into her life. but memory in today’s world is also resistance.
beqam/retribution
there will be retribution. retribution to everyone who came to kill to the land of Ichkeria and to the land of Ukraine.
but I hope that I will be the last generation of my family who has to fight with the Russian world. The rashist terrorist federation must die.
düẋalo/resistance
today three generations of Chechens are fighting for Ukraine and Chechnya - those who fought in the first Russian-Chechen war, those who fought in the second one and children for whom this war became the first in their life.
on the picture taken somewhere in the 1990s is the battalion commander of the Sheikh Mansur battalion, Muslim Cheberloevsky.
