The climate was mild, the surrounding countryside spectacular, and fruit, grapes, wine and dairy products abundant. Now Grozny is more like a post-nuclear nightmare, a city systematically leveled by the Russian military campaign that propelled Vladimir Putin to the presidency a year ago, where gunfire and explosions are still so common that they blend into the normal sounds of the city. These days 200,000 people live here. There are no shops, just muddy, improvised bazaars. There is little work.
Many thousands depend on handouts from the few international agencies working in the city.
Thanks to his fast cars and retinue of heavies with nicknames like King Kong, he can hardly be missed. But local people say he does little to help, and official salaries are paid only intermittently. At 6 p.m., when darkness starts to fall, the city freezes in fear. Moscow insists that it is winning the war, that the Chechens are rallying to its side, and that the situation in Grozny is almost normal. Many Western critics of Russia's operations in Chechnya, Putin said during an Internet conference earlier this month, just do not understand what is happening.