After Russia's first war against the province in 1994-96 which Clinton also defended, casting Boris Yeltsin in the role of Lincoln preserving the Union the population is believed to have fallen to about 700,000, a loss that reflects both deaths and emigration due to destroyed factories and increased crime. Last week, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimated that some 350,000 of those remaining people have been forced to flee Russia's onslaught in the second war. Many tens of thousands more are presumed homeless inside Chechnya. Thousands are dead, according to Oleg Orlov, chairman of the Russian human rights group Memorial. The capital of Grozny, once home to hundreds of thousands, is essentially a tomb, sealed off by Russian soldiers.
Every tree is scorched.
We didn't see a street where the destruction wasn't virtually complete. Some buildings are standing, of course, but it looked as if every floor of every building had been hit. Beyond Grozny, no one knows the full extent of death and displacement. Russia has allowed neither foreign correspondents nor humanitarian workers to survey the damage. Stetina sneaked in and out in December with Chechen fighters.