More from assassinated Anna Politkovskaya’s dispatches from Chechnya in “Is Journalism Worth Dying For” --
Focusing on Vladimir Putin and the Russian hierarchy regarding what she calls the “horror in Chechnya” and in border lands that Chechens faced:
From a diispatch dated Feb 16, 2003
“The co-called Renovation Board ... is chronically incapable of paying [laborers] for their work, but takes the ideological approach: ‘Build a settlement! Just do it! Putin has spoken!’
‘What work is that?’ I ask Supian Sambayev, who introduces himself as the site foreman. He and I walk over an area strewn with wooden structures and a defunct lattice of rusting pipes which is a battlefield for the image of the President as Architect for Peace in Chechnya.
‘For the houses,’ the foreman insists...
‘But what houses?’
Supian looks away ...”
From another dispatch, again focusing on Putin and the hierarchy -- dated July 5, 2005:
“First the profiles of the candidates for the War Prize, awarded for unleashing and fomenting the Chechen tragedy of 1994-2005. It has been founded by “Chechenskoye Obshchestvo,” unquestionably the best newspaper today published in Chechnya and Ingushetia, and the one most dynamically increasing its circulation ... The question, ‘Who bears the guilt for all this horror?’ is one the people ask themselves ...
But of course, who else could winners be if not Yeltsin and Dudavev? And who could be awarded the second prize, if not Yeltsin’s worthy successor, Putin; that No. 1 ideologist of blood-letting ...”
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