Liberty Live - Looting in Grozny

Khasin Raduev, North Caucasus, Chechen-Ingush border:

Employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ingushetia at the "Adler 20" post near the village of Sleptsovskaya told me that for the first time during the war, yesterday and today the number of people returning to Chechnya exceeded the number of those leaving the republic. After four months spent in tent camps and in Ingush villages, refugees, mostly middle-aged and elderly women, go home to evaluate on the spot the possibility of returning to their homes. As a rule, they travel empty-handed or carry with them food received as humanitarian aid. They still have relatives and friends there, and according to the stories of those familiar with the situation, life in the republic is not sweet now.

At the Adler-20 checkpoint I spoke with those traveling from Grozny. My interlocutor is Luiza Musaeva, a woman of about 35. She spent two days in Grozny. The house on Tukhachevsky Street, in which she lived with her family before the war, was practically not damaged by military operations - broken windows and doors do not count. Louise says that looters visited her apartment. The Musaevs hid all their belongings in the bedroom and covered them with wallpaper. But this trick was not new to the looters. They took away everything they could. What remained were two beds and the tool they used to open this peculiar hiding place. While Louise was crying over her difficult lot, and she had lost her property for the second time, two soldiers went up to the apartment. The woman says that they picked up everything that was left of the looters, and frankly said that their superiors allowed them to do whatever they wanted.

No one currently lives in the entire nine-story building. Luiza Musaeva also left, and meanwhile the soldiers were breaking down the door of someone’s apartment on the floor above. The woman says that at night there are periodic shootings in the city. There are rumors among people that the militants intend to capture Grozny on March 26, the day of the Russian presidential elections. In this regard, the city still remains closed to the male population and only women with Grozny registration are allowed there. But Louise does not advise other refugees who lived in the central regions or microdistricts to go to Grozny - houses have been destroyed, and there is famine in the city. “It’s better to look for a place to live somewhere in the countryside, but definitely at home in Chechnya,” she says.