Translated material
The path of Shahid
Is it easy to carry a bomb into a passenger bus
On October 22, the first funeral of the victims of the attack in Volgograd took place. As a result of the explosion that the suicide bomber made in a regular bus, 47 people were injured, six of them died. 2.5 years ago, The New Times sent his correspondent along the Moscow-Makhachkala-Moscow route to check which barriers are on the path of terrorists. And here is the result Leonid Grushka, Moscow - Makhachkala - Moscow
Flight bus in Volgograd, where an explosion thundered on October 21
March 22, 2011, 16.09. Arrived a flight in Makhachkala. Taxi driver Zakir, a man under 50, tall, thin, with a red beard, Avaret by nationality, became the guide of The New Times at the stage of studying the situation in the city. Behind Zakir’s back there are 20 years of work behind the bagel, and before that - the MAI diploma and the service in Afghanistan. We go with him to the North bus station, located on the road from Makhachkala.
Brother, you need to go to Moscow!
I go to the cash desks: "Are there any tickets for the flight of Makhachkala - Moscow?" “No, we don’t have such a route.” - "Where is there?" “Go out into the street, go downstairs and ask the locals, here.” I'm going. Towards - Hanyga, very tipsy, I ask where to find buses for Moscow. He: "Come with me, brother, I will arrange everything for you, but you only be silent - there are difficulties." We get into a two -story bus: on the windshield, the desired plate "Makhachkala - Moscow".
“Parking” this one does not look like a bus station, although there is a storage chamber, toilets, and a shower, as well as a mandatory chapel room, and even a concrete canopy from the rain. There is only a cash desk, respectively, and the cash register.
"What do you want, dear?" - He asks how it turned out later, the owner of this business. Hanyga replies: "I need to send my brother to Moscow." Master: “Not a question. Go on the bus. " We go. "Surname? Name?" - No passport, he does not ask any other document. He asks to call back the next day - find out if the flight broke. I leave the advance payment of 1000 rubles, 50% of the cost of a sealing place, the lying - 2500.
March 23, 18.30
The bus is on the spot, the young guys in tracksuits deftly load the goods into it: 230 large, 1 m in size by 60 cm, cardboard boxes with shoes, the songs of Timur Mutsuraev* and Nasodi (chants in Arabic without musical accompaniment) are carried out from the speakers). The bus correspondent The New Times said that now he was no longer alive.
| *The famous Chechen bard, which was a long -voice of Chechen militants for a long time, but then stood under the banners of Ramzan Kadyrov |
A police patrol is taking place by now and then: two in body armor and machine guns. But they did not approach the bus, no one was checked from anyone.
I ask: "Do you give a ticket for the report?" Master: "I will give you a piece of paper, write yourself what you need."
But the driver has a list of passengers, although he does not ask anyone either - he writes from his words.
Closer to 21.00
Already in deep darkness, the bus finally touches. On the exit from the city - the DPS post, stopped: the driver left, spread with Depeisniki a couple of words, hugged, drove on.
On the upper deck, where the correspondent of The New Times settled, only 5 sedentary and 8 bedridges, the rest of the space is occupied by cargo. The cargo lay under the sleeping places, and on them, and in the aisles. 
A bag with “Trotil”-12 pieces of yellow-brown household soap bought in the market in Makhachkala-I hide under the seat. 
Fruders: A young couple - they almost 39 hours of the road almost lay in one place, rising from it only at stops. Another man in a good suit, who, as he later said, in one of the Moscow fleets “steers” by carriers, the other, in a solid leather jacket, did not enter the conversation: almost all the way he played cards on the lower “deck” of the bus. A young guy - in Moscow is working on a construction site. A neighbor on the left is Zarif, 23 years old, a typical Caucasian appearance, wrestler’s neck, ears are torn, his nose is flattened, apparently, they beat him more than once, in short, a professional judoka. Without a beard and a mustache, in his hands the rosary, on the head of a skullcap, in almost every parking lot went into the prayer room.
23.15
Road index sign: Baba-Yurt-to the right, Khasavyurt-to the left.
23.44
Another checkpoint, Depeisniki jumped up for a couple of minutes on the bus, did not check the documents.
23.56
Stop in Kizlyar. Shock: men do not use paper in the toilet - instead of it, water is from a jug. Tin.
March 24, 6.11
At the post near Kochubey, the bus was weighed, the driver was called to the post of traffic police. The police got into the bus - they were interested in the cargo. On the first deck, the cargo was fluently examined, on the second - they did not even rise. Yes, and they could not if they wanted to: the boxes filled the entire passage from the stairs.
We talked with the judoka: Zarif said that the Sunni Islam in the Caucasus is everywhere, “we are one in his faith,” said that in Iran a completely different Islam. When asked who are the Wahhabis, he replied that this is one of the branches of Islam - more tough in the interpretation of those rules and canons that are written in sacred books. How do young Wahhabis take? Poverty, lack of work. The author and the interlocutors in Makhachkala said about that: “The ranks of the bandits are replenished very simply. There is no work, you need to feed the family. So they put a person on their knees and give the right to choose: rush into the abyss himself or we will push you. And he would have work, employment, then a lot would go differently, ”said Ibrahim, a former engineer of the Makhachkala shipyard.
7.01
We are already in Kalmykia, the village of Troitskoye: we checked the documents from one passenger below and at one at the top. The bag with Trotil did not attract attention again. In total, in Kalmykia they stopped three times.
8.53
Drivers driving the bus change without stopping movement: they let the bus with a roll and change. The monitor included the film: “Mechanic” - an American militant about killers. Ruslan, a neighbor, comments: "An intelligent choice comes with experience, and a stupid choice is given to him (that is, to experience)." It turned out: Ruslan served 8 years in Nizhnevartovsk for a robbery. “I leaned back (left the zone) recently,” he said, “of all the documents - an extract about the release.” For the entire path, no one asked for documents from Ruslan. 
11.03
Volgograd region. They stopped three times too. On the exit from the region they kept about 20 minutes - they checked the documentation for the cargo. Rashid, who himself worked as a driver of heavy vehicles for ten years, explained: “Two years ago, they took one hundred rubles from heavy trucks at each post, 200 from intercity buses - now, probably, it has become more expensive. There are few options: either a simple few hours with a check in full, or a small bribe, capable of dull the vigilance of the most strict traffic police outfit. ”
Next - Voronezh, Tambov regions. Closer to midnight, they stopped near some cafe (by the way, without exception, all the cafe on the route belonged to the Avars), drank tea, stand on the porch, the guys smoke, I hear a conversation. One is a solid man over 50, the other is a young guy, mother Ukrainian, father Kumyk, served under a contract in military intelligence. A man constantly and very quickly sorting out the rosary. The kid asks: "Dear, because there were no races during the Prophet?" The man does not answer the question, but he says: “As it were, the road is long, the car is old ...” and tells the story: there was a respected person in Dagestan, made a pilgrimage to Mecca many times, owned a bus and made 19 walkers on it - transported boxes with white male socks. On the 19th lane he was tied: the socks were busted by heroin. In short, they talked. And we went on.
We drove through the Kotovsky forest at night. The road is almost empty, the men joked: probably, except for the partisans, there is no one here.
March 25, 7.00
I woke up - and outside the window is already the Moscow region. We stopped in front of the Moscow Ring Road - they waited more than an hour when they arrived to pick up the load. They began to lower the boxes - they lowered 110 boxes, put it on the side of the road. I twist my head: the police will drive up, no? Do not drive up. Not one. Nobody in general. But the Gazelle appeared to pick up the load. Then the bus moved on.
In just 35 hours and almost 2 thousand km, our bus stopped at the posts 16 times. In most cases, the conversation between the bus driver and traffic police officers was short: greeting, providing documents for verification, a cursory visual inspection of passengers. Checking the identification documents of passengers was carried out selectively at just two posts.
The bag with Trotil has never interested anyone. The editors' task - to identify the vigilance of employees of the traffic police posts for the prevention of the transportation of “home -made explosive devices” - was completed. Vigilance is checked. She is not.
Photos: Irina Ilyicheva/ RIA-News