Guerrillas reclaim the night under the noses of Russians
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Chechen guerillas are reclaiming the night, moving from district to district in the safety of darkness under the noses of the Russian troops glued to their posts.
Chechen guerillas are reclaiming the night, moving from district to district in the safety of darkness under the noses of the Russian troops glued to their posts.
The Russians stay inside their heavily defended positions in order to avoid clashes with the locals fighters who are intimately familiar with the terrain.
But there is also a balance of fear between the two sides who make efforts to avoid each other. On a recent evening we walked unnoticed for several hours parallel to the federal troops' positions.
The Russians surround their posts with armoured cars and keep the headlights switched on to light up the area around them. Of course, they do it out of fear of being attacked at night. But the brightly lit, bustling scene is like Kutuzovsky Prospekt (Moscow's main thoroughfare) in the week before Christmas.
With the engines grumbling, the soldiers did not hear as the Chechen fighters walked right past their positions. The road is barely visible and churned up by the caterpillar tracks of the armoured cars.
We stumbled and fell noisily, but we passed all the Russian posts and the guerrillas greeted a group of armed Chechens coming in the other direction.
The village of Kater-Yurt, 20 miles (30 kilometres) south- east of Grozny, has become a kind of safe zone which has attracted refugees from all over Chechnya. So far, about 10,000 have made their way here.
Under pressure from the Russians, the local elders managed to persuade the Chechen fighters to leave, allowing Russian interior ministry troops to comb the village to make sure they had gone.
Five women arrived in the village yesterday after crawling along a dry riverbed by night, from the village of Alkhan-Yurt, which is 10 miles (15 kilometres) away. They said that in Alkhan-Yurt, there were many dead because federal soldiers had been throwing grenades into basements; corpses lay in the cellars and out on the streets because there was nobody to bury them.
Andrei Babitsky is a journalist with Radio Liberty.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments