This interview with RFE/RL correspondent Andrei Babitsky was made on March 1, 2001 in Prague. Extracts are given below. For the complete interview, see "I want to live in a new Russia, not in the Soviet Union."

Difficulties of journalism in Russian People
Putin : positives and negatives
Chechnya war's influence on Russia
Prospects of Chechen/Russian coexistence
PACE decision to restore Russia's vote

Prague Watchdog: How can journalists work in Chechnya now? Are they allowed to enter the territory without any permission or do they need some accreditation?

B: There is a certain procedure. Journalists are given accreditation that is necessary for obtaining another accreditation from the federal forces' press-centre. Any journalist coming to Chechnya must be registered at the press-centre. In fact, the journalists who are now in Chechnya do their job at the press-centre in Khankala, the federal forces' headquarters. There are virtually no exceptions. Foreigners have no opportunity of getting to Chechnya, unless they do it illegally - or legally, but within a big group that is usually transported to Chechnya from Moscow by plane or helicopter. Such a group makes a trip around the sites of war glory and "Potemkin villages", serving as window dressing.

Moving around the territory on one's own in fact impossible. A journalist without registration in Khankala does not get permission to a number of inhabited places. And if you are registered in Khankala, you can travel around Chechnya only accompanied by the press-centre officers. As a result, the only way Russian journalists can do their job now is to publish in their reports the same information as officials do, i. e. copy the official view of reality. Foreign reporters are either prevented from doing their work, or they make their way to Chechnya illegally and at their own risk, which is really dangerous. ... There is a severe wartime and political censorship in the territory of Chechnya. The press-centre inspects all published materials, and only on the results of such inspections, it decides whether reporters are allowed to re-enter Chechnya, or more precisely, the territory of Khankala. As a matter of fact, what journalists do in the Khankala headquarters is just sit and wait in former maintenance carriages for weeks on end. From time to time, a press-centre officer, setting out, say, for a mopping-up operation with a special platoon, agrees to take a group of reporters or an individual in his armoured carriage or helicopter. This is how closed Chechnya is to journalists.

Anna Politkovskaya went to Chechnya on exceptionally liberal grounds. This was thanks to her exclusive relationship with the new Chechen government. After the scandal, I expect she won't be allowed to visit Chechnya anymore; in addition, all parallel or roundabout ways of getting to Chechnya will be closed to her....

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PW: What are the most difficult aspects of being a war correspondent or a journalist in Russia?

B: A war correspondent has a hard time in today's Russia, though there is a lot to be curious about. The majority of journalists have accepted completely voluntarily, i. e. without any pressure from the authorities, the official point of view. It can even be said that it is not voluntariness but sincerity that is behind their attitude. The authorities have declared that what is being defended in Chechnya are the national interests of Russia and the future of the Russian Federation and that the government is running the military campaign in order to prevent the real danger. And many people came to believe it because they were shocked by the explosions in Moscow one and a half year ago. The Chechens quickly became for many the ones behind the blasts, although as far as I know, there has been no reliable evidence of this so far. Journalism is a profession that reflects to a great extent the fears, anxieties and hopes of the people and how the society appears to itself. So journalism could not remain aloof to the public mood concerning the conflict. And I think that many of my colleagues in Russia now consider the issue of human rights to be marginal. This is because they believe that there is a more important task ahead: they have to fight together with the authorities and soldiers for the preservation of their country and to defend the principle of the integrity of the Russian Federation.

To my mind, a journalist should always keep a certain distance from the authorities.... There are certain basic principles which, in my opinion, everybody should comply with. Human rights are inalienable and superior to the rights of a state, even the right of a state to protect itself. So what I consider essential in the conflict is the point of view concerning human rights. It seems to me that a state cannot be strong if it considers the integrity of its territory more important than the value of a single citizen or the value of the life and democratic rights of one citizen. I mean that I consider human rights to be above the abstract and variable right of a state to sovereignty or falsely formulated aims to defend itself against a false threat which is enormously overestimated.

PW: What positive and negative things has Russian President Vladimir Putin managed to do?

B: This is a difficult question because today the negative elements outweigh the positives in the Putin debate. I will talk about Putin's positives... There are lots of alarming tendencies in his activities, but we cannot say whether they will lead to a logical conclusion or not. I think, to certain extent, he has managed to re-establish control over the state machinery, but he has used counter-constitutional methods, particularly in forming the presidential vertical, the vertical of authorities as well as in rendering the Federation Council powerless. All these measures were counter-constitutional, though necessary and maybe justifiable, because they have triggered no serious conflicts in society. There has been no violation of human rights rising directly from these measures. …

Obviously, his biggest problem is the negativism in his power. It is absolutely clear that among his basic aims is a fight against dissidence. For some reason, Putin feels enormously irritated particularly by the fact that the reality in Chechnya differs from the official point of view. He feels angry facing up to the facts that things there are not going the way the official propaganda is trying to portray. I worry that if he takes this tendency to its logical conclusion, the situation in Russia may take a serious turn for the worse. Then it is possible that Russia will see a kind of soft dictatorship with revived and updated soviet-like methods, i. e. authoritarian. Actually, this has been happening to a certain extent already. Although such methods are not used to the full, the case of the NTV television station shows how strict Vladimimir Putin is in defending principles he himself set out, such as the principle of removing oligarchs from power.

Having formed my views in the dissident environment of the Soviet era, I will never have enough reasons to like him: he is proud of his career in the KGB. For me he is a man resembling our past, but what I try to see in our country is the future. I want to live in a new Russia, not in the Soviet Union. …

PW: Let's turn back to the conflict in Chechnya. Does it have any influence on the character and spirits of the Russian people? Is there a Chechen syndrome?

B: The conflict has had a quite negative influence. There are two processes which go hand in hand. Firstly, there is a diffusion of certain norms of behaviour adopted by those who serve in the forces in Chechnya, which spill over into Russia. Members of the police and FSB as well as soldiers from all over Russia, after a two or three-month stint in Chechnya, return home. These people not only suffer from post-traumatic syndrome, which itself provokes a certain degree of aggression, but they also accept different norms of behaviour: they think violence is a highly effective instrument for dealing with criminal offenders or people who seem to be criminal offenders. The spread of such norms will have serious and broad-scale consequences. The consequences have already begun to emerge, although the public is not much aware of them. But I suppose Russia will soon face huge problems in this regard.

A second aspect is possibly even more significant. Having started the war in Chechnya, Putin launched a quite successful propaganda campaign touching on people's negative emotions. The Russian people have been fed racial propaganda: Putin has claimed that if the Chechens put bombs in houses, torture hostages and trade people, they should not be treated as human. According to the propaganda, the Chechens, their culture and tradition of social lifestyle are in contrast to the principles of European and Russian laws, and thus Chechen people should be treated the way they deserve.

Finally, as an uneducated KGB agent, Putin sticks to a very primitive eschatological idea of Russia being a buffer in the conflict between two civilizations, Christianity and Islam. The idea has become a part of the national culture in today's Russia. Such forms of racism, which you can see not only in the streets but also in certain intelligentsia circles, were generally considered shameful two years ago. A member of the Russian intelligentsia can now talk about Chechens as people of a bad nation without fear. … In other words, there is a shift in democratic norms in Russian minds these days. And the absence of an inalienable minimum of democratic freedoms stems to a significant degree from the Chechen war.

PW: What are the future prospects for Chechnya and Russia coexisting in a common state?

B: Now I think it's impossible for Chechnya and Russia to exist in a single state. There are so many problems between the two countries. To be precise, the troubles are between the two societies, not among individuals. I believe Russians and Chechens will be able to associate with one another normally when the conflict eventually dies down. However, as I have said, we face a huge number of problems between the societies. There is only one way Russia can keep Chechnya within the structure of a single state: those who have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity will be punished. In this sense, as number one in the country, Putin would have to start with himself. As commander-in-chief, he assumes ultimate responsibility for the political measures that have paved the way for numerous crimes during the military campaign. You know, the memory of the dead, mass shootings and extra-judicial executions will never fade. Unless Russia feels obliged to launch needed legal proceedings, Chechens will never believe they are citizens of Russia enjoying full rights.

I think that if we continuously deprive them of the right to an impartial court and the punishment of criminals, their spite will survive for decades and they won't be able to live in Russia. The Chechen people themselves are possibly not aware of this today. They are being tortured in a huge pressure-cooker: northern Chechnya is a kind of concentration camp. Chechens are making an effort to adjust to living with Russians, but I don't think they will have any success. As soon as Russians remove their shield from the territory, Chechen society will again start seeking its identity, and as a civil society, it will feel increasingly its resistance to the human rights violations. The prospects of fair proceedings and the punishment of criminals in today's Russia are bleak, for the next ten to fifteen years they are even worse. This time will be enough for Chechnya to realize that it cannot co-exist with Russia. Putin is confused by an illusion: he believes the problem can be handled by means of administrative pressure based on power. However, the opposite is true; hatred is growing stronger and new troubles are appearing. …
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PW: The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) returned the right to vote to Russia a month ago. How do you feel about this and what do Chechens think of it?

B: I think my opinion on this coincides with the view of Chechens. I consider PACE's decision to be shameful. I don't see any significant improvement in human rights in Chechnya. The essential role of PACE is to defend human rights: it limits the membership of states and accepts the parliaments of various countries accordingly. You can see no significant improvement in Chechnya. There are some changes in numbers and amounts. To be fair, it is true that the civil courts have now started to work. Although civil legal proceedings are obviously necessary in the country, Chechens themselves do not need them so much. They are able to settle civil matters on their own. But what they really need is criminal proceedings that would bring an end to everyday scorn and ridicule that civilians are subjected to. Only eighteen out of fifty-two criminal complaints have resulted in criminal proceedings in the court over the past year and a half of war.

We can scarcely hope that our authorities change their attitude towards Chechens and the situation in Chechnya in the near future. The status quo in the country will continue.

What is quite important is that there is a new political climate, especially in Russia. A strong new leader has taken power and Europe doesn't want to argue with him. Europe has no interest in re-introducing the political mechanisms of a cold war, so Russia's violent campaign in Chechnya is in fact a sort of blackmail. Thus I hope a lot can be done by the new US administration which, it seems, is ready to highlight the human rights question in Chechnya every time its members sit down with Russian officials.