The Battle For Chechnya: Grozny 1, Moscow 0
Brief Background
The Muslim territory of Chechnya was once part of the Soviet Union, until its collapse in 1991. In 1994, Chechnya declared its independence from Moscow, triggering an all-out war. In August 1996, a humiliated Russia declared a ceasefire, bringing about a de facto independence and a peace ‘deal’. Chechnya is a bitterly poor nation and devoutly Muslim. Much of the drive to be independent from its Russian shackles carries with it an Islamic component; the most radical anti-Russians are those who have declared a jihad against the powers in Moscow. For hundreds of years, Russia has fought to subdue the peoples of the Caucasus, and the latest round of fighting is yet another act in that power play.
Day #1. Monday 20th. January 1997 07:30:
Crawled out of bed and faced the cold, grey Moscow morning outside my bedroom window, which had now become something of a ritual. I never tired of the view, towering sixteen stories above Akademika Korolova’s four lanes, dominated by that imposing TV tower. Today it was snowing, and I was going to Chechnya.
Conscripted Russian soldiers had been known to injure themselves rather than face a tour in the staunch Muslim breakaway republic, where allegedly at least seven of them were killed each day, before the army retreated. Once again Grozny, the most heavily bombed capital on the planet, braced itself for another influx of infidels – but this time it was not the Russian Army doing the damage, but hundreds of frenzied foreign journalists, all keen to grab their scoops, soundbites and background stories as Chechnya’s election preparations went into full swing – the first election since the bloody civil war began two years ago.
After a strong coffee to blow away the cobwebs, I threw the bare essentials into my travel bag; toiletries, warm clothes, a novel, an emergency roll of toilet paper, a bottle of Louisiana hot sauce and a pack of cards. By 09:40, Chris, myself and the drivers had loaded the heavy flight cases containing our ‘portable’ Betacam edit suite into the van and Misha was behind the wheel, weaving us through the morning traffic to Vnukovo Airport.
Once there, we had to pay every step of the way – to get the cases from the van to check-in the porters charged 200,000 rubles, followed by 1,900,000 rubles for excess baggage and a further 400,000 to another group of porters to load them onto the plane. One way tickets to Grozny were priced at 700,000 rubles each. Now the waiting game began.
It took ages to complete the convoluted check-in procedure and do the scanner shuffle as other TV crews scrambled and shoved and shouted at the baggage staff to load their gear. It was touch and go for a moment as Misha negotiated with the porters, who in turn badgered the harassed check-in woman – who was busy arguing with the CBS crew. She was determined to stand firm on the ridiculous regulation of no piece of luggage over 25 kilos – which was totally ridiculous when we all had heavy TV ENG (Electronic News Gathering in plain English) gear and edit packs. One look at all the flight cases, camera kits, and sound gear told us this was going to be one seriously overloaded flight. Could the plane even lift off with all this gear, especially if the porters were falsifying the actual weight just to get it past that screaming woman? Chris and I looked at each other; oh well he doesn’t seem worried.
By 12:15 we were struggling against the cold wind with our hand luggage (2 cameras, 2 camera bags plus the wide angle lens case) onto the bus, off the bus only to huddle against the biting cold at the foot of the steps to the ageing Tupolov 134. Waiting to board an apparently ready aircraft is a mysterious Russian ritual that no-one seems to have any good reason for. Then as you finally, thankfully climb the steps, struggling toward the warmth just ahead, the flight attendant has to check your ticket – just in case you somehow managed to sneak through the all the other passport checks and stamps.
Once inside, it was the usual you-got-seat-numbers-but-scramble-to-sit-anywhere routine. Inflight ’service’ was a small cup of tea and a tiny packet of wafer biscuits. More like war rations than airline food.
14:40: We made a successful, but bumpy touchdown at Grozny airport. That was the easy part. When the plane’s engines shut down, so did the air conditioning; we sweated for 45 minutes in the ever increasing stuffiness and heat, while the flight before us finished with the airport’s only set of airline stairs.
Another hour or so and we had our bags and equipment – which had been chucked onto the back of a truck and driven around to the front of the airport – everyone grabbed their stuff in a mad free-for-all rush. We crammed our stuff into three small Zhigulis and drove out of the airport, along streets lined with the shells of bombed out buildings. This wasn’t a city so much as the obliterated ruins of one.
The drive gave me my first opportunity to glimpse just a tiny fraction of the damage done to Grozny, the result of many months of tank barrages by the Russian Army.
I was gobsmacked by the sheer scale of the devastation; no structure was left unscarred, riddled with bullet and bomb holes like concrete Swiss cheese. Not a single window intact.
I kept muttering, “Holy shit,” while Chris and Misha smiled to themselves; they’d seen it all before on previous trips. The scenes on either side of the muddy, pot-holed, bumpy road reminded me of a set from a WWII movie, but the centre of town was a film set straight out of War Of The Worlds. Not one building had escaped devastation, as far as the eye could see. The whole city had the appearance of a bizarre post nuclear theme park. It suddenly seemed very apt that the Russian word for ’sad’ – ‘groozny ‘ – was almost identical to ‘Grozny’.
Steely-eyed Chechen soldiers, young and old, in full camouflage combat kit, toting Kalashnikovs, criss-crossed with bullet belts, roamed the streets among the shell-shocked residents, watching everything as they calmly went about their daily routine.
We waited an hour while our accreditations were prepared. You could tell the first timers here – we all had gaping mouths and glazed stares.
As night fell and the temperature plummeted, we arrived at our lodgings; the private residence of a local family who had hired out several rooms in the main part of their house to us. The Dutch journalists had arrived the day before and organised our rooms. They told us it was a great place with lots of room, but – it also had the dubious honour of having the hottest toilet on the planet! And they weren’t exaggerating.
The loo also contained the gas boiler that supplied the heating for the whole house, consequently the temperature inside must have been at least a scorching 50°C! Although the others were horrified at having to endure this searing Death Valley heat every time they had to spend a penny, I personally found it invigorating, almost like a sauna or a typical summer’s day in Queensland.
We promptly unpacked the flight cases and set up our portable edit suit; two Betacam videotape machines, a small colour monitor, speaker, audio mixer and microphone, all sitting on top of two tables. And within an hour, presto – one instant field production unit. Just add two cameramen and their kits.
The taped-over smashed windows served to remind us that a war had raged through here, plus the bedroom door of the Dutch chaps was splintered by bullet holes – as if the Terminator himself had blitzed his way through the house.
Then, at long last, came dinner, served in the kitchen by two Chechen babushkas. Tasty vegetable soup followed by a kind of bean mayonnaise salad, bread, salami and my Louisiana hot sauce. We hit the sack early as we had an early start in the morning. I eventually got to sleep, in spite of Chris’ snoring and the ominous bullet hole in the wall beside my bed…
Day #2
Up at 06:30, a quick breakfast that consisted of a boiled egg, bread, salami and two cups of coffee, then out with our driver to pick up Medina, a Chechen lady who is part of the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia. She represents the mothers who are desperately battling against the authorities to learn the fate of their sons, soldiers who are either POW or killed in action. They simply wanted to know where their sons or their bodies are, whether they were alive or dead. No-one knows. even the army allegedly, yet another indication of just how chaotic this war was.
I should mention at this point that, unlike other TV crews, we were driving around without the protection of any armed bodyguards, which made us vulnerable to attack or kidnapping. I am sure the producers had their reasons for this, but I was never made aware of them.
After some vigorous discussion between the driver, his companion, and our Dutch correspondent Peter, we zig-zagged around the bombed out streets until we eventually found the apartment block where Medina lived. More waiting around, then we were on our way (minus the driver’s adviser) to the first of many interviews and locations we would cover over the next ten days to paint a backdrop of Chechnya in relation to the forthcoming elections. We were headed for a secret location about 15 klicks outside the city, where we hoped to interview a young Russian conscript POW.
We drove through a maze of back streets to a hidden Chechen army outpost. When the soldiers brought their captive out, we learned that he, like many other Russian POWs, were being well looked after, not harshly treated, and not exactly being held against their wishes. This was partly due to the fact that a lot of Russian soldiers were conscripts and did not agree with this war; they had fled their platoons when the killing started. Better to run than be fried alive in their tanks as the Chechens picked them off one by one with their anti-tank missiles – they knew exactly where the weak points on the Russian tanks were. Therefore, as far as the Russian authorities are concerned, this guy was officially a deserter – and the last thing he wanted was to be released to face the music – in this case a court martial followed by a stiff prison sentence. In fact, he had already converted to Islam and hoped to settle eventually in Chechnya when he was released. This became a familiar story; many Russian POW’s are now valuable political pawns as Russia and Chechnya try to justify this completely illogical and unnecessary war.
Then we headed back into town, to an infamous Russian torture prison known as PAP-1, a former bus repair depot, now a graveyard full of rusting, burnt out buses. Unspeakable atrocities had been committed against Chechen prisoners here in the process of interrogation by brutal Russian soldiers.
Medina led us into the pitch black depths of this hell hole, and it was so dark I had to use camera light as a torch to show the way as she led us along the narrow stone corridor between the tiny, stinking, rat-infested cells where many prisoners had been forced to endure their inhuman imprisonment. If ever there was a hell, this was it. I felt distinctly uneasy down here, my skin crawled as I could almost hear the screams echoing around the blood-stained walls as I was filming Medina giving her graphic descriptions of the brutal cruelty of the Russian soldiers as they tortured their Chechen victims.
If it wasn’t for the fact that this was work, and that I was being paid to capture images of real-world situations, I would have refused to come down here. And now I couldn’t wait to get out. The place made my skin crawl; it felt like the pure horror and evil of this place was seeping out of the walls, trying to smother me. My camera tape ran out so I had to return to the outside world, load a new one and return with our aged Chechen guide and shoot more gory close-ups of the iron cross welded to the wall where the prisoners were tied during their torture, and the blood stains on the wall that didn’t bear thinking about. I half expected to see a skull grinning at me in the darkness through the piles of rubbish on the floor. I shot the bare minimum in a state of numbness and got the hell out of there.
Ghosts and paranormal phenomena has never freaked me out, but this was different, this was real evil, the sort that makes men kill and torture each other.
Back upstairs we filmed graffiti slogans painted by the prisoners in bleak unfurnished rooms. We interviewed Medina outside the prison and finally, gladly, left the horrors behind us – after I’d collected half a dozen bullet shells from the thousands that were strewn across the area.
We had a quick lunch, then took off to film polling booths and posters of the candidates. We waited at the headquarters of one of the main contenders, the infamous Islamic rebel leader Shamil Basayev, but he didn’t turn up. We returned to base and sent our driver off on a secret and urgent mission while we logged our day’s rushes.
Within an hour he returned with cans of Danish beer and bottles of Russian vodka that he had dug up at one of the markets – under the counter of course. This is an Islamic country and alcohol is outlawed here, even for us infidels, but the laws are somewhat flexible.
Later we returned to Basayev’s polling station, and waited with a few other TV crews. I chewed the fat with Swedish TV colleague Henrik. By 20:00 we gave up and returned home for dinner, a yummy potato soup followed by a tasty Chechen chicken and carrot dish washed down by cold beer and vodka.
Day #3
Crawled out of bed to discover there was no hot water, in spite of our toilet sauna. And it’s snowing outside.
Again we visited Basayev’s headquarters, where we found his soldiers watching home videos of last year’s fighting in the forests. He wasn’t due to appear today, so we took off to wait outside the Foreign Ministry on the off chance that we will be able to interview the Minister for the Interior about the official policy on the Russian POW/deserter situation.
The streets were patrolled by young Chechen men in their fatigues toting Kalashnikov rifles, spitting and acknowledging each other, while in contrast, beautiful young Chechen girls strolled around in their colourful dresses, shopping and going about their daily routines as though was normal. And then it hit me; this war had been raging for the last two years. This was normality for them. Devastation was everywhere I looked. Not one building had escaped target practice by Russian tanks.
Life in the ruins: note the small market behind me.
Day #4
Early start as Geert and I were driven out to Naurskaya, a small town in the neighbouring province of Ichkeria. A bone-shaking journey as our small Lada car bounced and bumped its way through a million deep potholes – the result of tank tracks tearing up the roads. I began filming the small marketplace as Geert wandered off to rustle up some people to interview. Within half an hour, I was forced to stop shooting when the sheriff arrived and demanded we accompany him to the local police station to register.
He wanted to assign us one of his bodyguards, not so much to stop us from filming certain places or people, but rather as a response to the fact that two Russian journalists had been taken hostage on Monday, so they had orders to protect the foreign media. The last thing the new government wanted was these elections to be tainted by the capture of the press.
So, after a lengthy procedure of filling in forms and discussing our proposed movements, we were assigned a guard and off we went to interview the head of the local administration. After that we interviewed a Cossack chap about the post war situation, shot some exteriors of a couple of rebuilt mosques and sought opinions from the women serving behind the market stalls. One tiny little old lady took one look at Geert’s six foot plus frame, and told us that the only reason the Russian soldiers had spared her was that she was too small! As the sun set we headed off back to Grozny; I braved possible death by explosion, fired up the clunky old gas water heater in the bathroom and finally enjoyed the much-needed luxury of a hot shower.
Day #5
Woke up to discover it had been snowing during the night. I spent the entire day indoors editing the long documentary style story for the Dutch network. Finished by 18:00, and after dinner we popped into the EBU outpost and met up with another Chris (ITN cameraman-editor) and journalist Lawrence from London’s Channel 4, plus their Russian driver/fixer Sergei. After much arm-twisting, they came back to our place for a few beers and vodkas as we swapped war stories.
Day #6
During the first part of the morning, I inserted Geert’s voice track into the Dutch story I had edited yesterday, which effectively finished the piece.
At 11am we drove off to Grozny airport to film the arrival of the OSCE team of international observers, some of whom hailed from Holland. Their task was to oversee the running of the voting process and make sure everything was above board. As each of the two jets taxied up to the arrivals hall, the waiting cameramen, journalists with microphones and still photographers would rush the passengers as they streamed from the plane.
It was a classic bumfight; everyone shoved and jostled everybody else as we all tried to record the observer’s soundbites. Our Dutch journalist Peter spat the dummy when a Russian asshole wouldn’t let us into the arrivals hall to interview one of the Dutch observers – even though we had the correct accreditation. He maintained the stupid excuse that there were already too many cameras in there. He was just being pig-stubborn and obstructive to feed his over-inflated ego.
Eventually we were let in as everyone was leaving, but we managed a quick interview and returned to base, where I then edited the Dutch news story that was to be beamed out at 19:30 that evening. After which, ITN Chris and Lawrence turned up at our place for another late night boozing session …
Day #7
Surfaced at 9ish and edited the Belgian news story with Johan. After lunch I spent a relaxed afternoon with Geert as our taxi driver Ahmed drove us on a photo safari around the ruins of Grozny.
In one of the main streets, I photographed a bullet hole ridden street sign that read “Ulitsa Mira” – ‘mira’ was a word which I already knew since the main arterial road which connected our office to the city in Moscow was Prospect Mira; which ironically translates as ‘Peace’ or ‘World’ Street, depending on which meaning you assign to ‘mira’. When Ahmed saw me staring at the sign, he ripped it off the blitzed building and presented it to me. I still have it at home today.
My ultimate souvenir of Grozny.
Back to base for a sauna in the toilet and a shower. The Chechen ladies prepared a very tasty chicken and carrot dish for our dinner. After accompanying Johan to the EBU base so he could transmit his news story to Brussels, we had a quiet evening at home with the beer and vodka.
Day 8: Election day
Up at 06:00 and off to one of the local polling stations to film the arrival of one of the Dutch observers at 7am. I was frozen to the bone as we waited in the subzero full moonlit pre-dawn darkness. Once the observer and his contingent arrived, the voting became a kind of Carry On madness as everyone crowded into the tiny room, eager to cast their vote.
The staff were also eager to show us press that no-one was being coerced, that all the voting was done in complete freedom and in accordance with the international rules. At the same time, the officials were arguing with the soldiers sent to guard the Dutch observer; they didn’t want the room crammed with machine-gun-toting men in case there was an accident. The soldiers stood firm proclaiming that they had to stay close to the observers, after all they were just following their orders.
An old man, who would be the first to vote, was caught up in all the shouting and hysteria and mayhem as he couldn’t read or understand the voting form. I filmed him as a burly soldier stood with him behind the curtain of the polling booth and helped him tick the appropriate boxes – which gave the impression that this little old man was being forced to vote at gunpoint. The absurdity of the shot made me chuckle as I filmed. After I had enough footage of two polling booths and vox pops, we returned to base for breakkie and a kip.
At 17:00 I edited a news story for the Dutch and beamed it out from the EBU site, where the Mayor of Grozny, a bearded chap called Zelimkhan Yanderbiev made his appearance, surrounded by a phalanx of heavily armed bodyguards, for a live interview. With military precision, the guards took up their positions as Yanderbiev stood in front of the camera outside in the freezing cold as he was miked up. They watched everyone like hawks, checking out the roof also. I had the distinct feeling that if anyone made even the slightest suspicious move, they would open up their machine guns and waste everyone in sight – too many movies I think.
That night saw celebratory drinks back at base. Mission accomplished, the vote was unanimous; a job well done.
Day #9
A sunny but cold day as we as we packed our gear and de-rigged the edit suite. Geert and I made a quick trip to the local markets and bought some souvenirs. We packed our bags, shoved everything into three cars and drove to the airport.
By 14:00 we were strapped into our seats, TV cameras tucked underneath us and airborne thirty minutes later. Chris had the window seat. The stewardess appeared at 17:30 and announced that we would be landing in twenty minutes at Domodedovo Airport, a domestic shithole on the southern outskirts of Moscow. We felt the plane descend, but as we approached the runway, the engines revved up and we gained altitude suddenly – landing aborted. Chris and I exchanged looks as the pilot swung around for another attempt. Chris informed me that it was pitch black outside and snowing quite heavily.
We circled in a holding pattern for half an hour, and descended again … the engines whined … up we went again.
Chris watched out the window and said “Nope. Not this time. Try again.”
And I thought, “Shit, for Christ’s sake just put this bloody plane down.”
For the first time in my life I started to experience what I think was a panic attack; my entire body buzzed with pins and needles and my breathing was laboured – even though mentally I felt OK, I had lost control of my body in a fight-or-flee response. I really thought I was going to pass out if we didn’t land soon. A very strange feeling indeed.
The pilot swung around, and in we came again – this time we both watched as the snowbound runway flashed past beneath us, illuminated in the bright runway lights. The plane lurched as the wheels hit hard. I had visions of us skidding sideways along the runway and tumbling end over end and bursting into flames – too many disaster movies again. But thank (insert preferred diety here) we slowed and braked; down in one piece. As we waited to leave the plane, the stewardess casually informed us that we were not at Domodedovo, due to heavy snow, and had been diverted to Vnukovo, way over the other side of Moscow! Our drivers would be waiting at the wrong airport, unless it had been announced, which considering the usual level of Russian organisation, seemed unlikely.
We hauled our arses off the plane, down the slippery stairs in the snow and made it into the terminal. Chris phoned our drivers and found out they were already enroute to us. Soon we’d be home sweet home.
But just at that moment, Johan got a call from his head office in Brussels and was asked to do a rushed news story straight away. I was chosen (no rest for the wicked) to go with him to the EBU office in Moscow and edit the story.
So we grabbed a taxi, but by the time we arrived, an hour later, they’d changed their minds and cancelled. So we had our driver pick us up and take us home at 20:00. Home at long last.
I relaxed in a hot bath with a glass of Cognac, and relived my first taste of Chechnya.
Would I ever return?
Probably. One day.
