The second Chechen war, like the first one which lasted from 1994 to 1996, is plunging deeper and deeper into barbarism. Mid-January figures claim 15,000 dead on the Chechen side and 3,000 on the Russian, without counting the hundreds of thousands injured, the children mutilated, the women raped by a permanently drunk soldiery, the more than 300,000 refugees living in filth under the guns of their ‘guardians’, suffering from hunger, thirst and epidemics. And it’s not only the flesh and blood of the Chechens which is being cut or drained. Their homes are being systematically ransacked. The Russian daily Kommersant (quoted in Le Monde 21 January) reported that "carpets, audio and video equipment and other material, altogether worth millions of dollars" were found in the trucks of the elite 22nd Brigade of the ministry of the interior.

In WR 231 and IR 100 we published a sticker distributed in Moscow by a group of internationalists opposing the war in Chechnya. In this issue we are publishing an article written by other proletarian elements elsewhere in Russia. Although we don’t agree with all its formulations, we warmly welcome this text as further proof that, despite the Russian bourgeoisie’s efforts to flatten all criticism of its bloody imperialist adventure in the Caucasus under a steamroller of nationalist hysteria, the voices of working class internationalism continue to make themselves heard. The comrades in Russia have asked us to ‘re-translate’ their own hand-written English translation and we apologise in advance for any misreadings and mistakes, especially where Russian names are concerned.

Caught between the anvil of the local mafia gangs under Maskhalov and Bassev, who are wrangling over who controls the country, and the Russian military, often forced to join up behind one or the other, nearly two million people are hostages and victims of this new imperialist war. The bombing goes on, devastating entire villages. Yeltsin, a blood-stained buffoon who is a worthy successor to Stalin, has been using one of the classic Stalinist recipes for mass repression: you encircle an area and massacre everyone in it.