![]() ![]() Category I invalids from the Chechnya wars can trade their $60 monthly pension for metro passes and a trip to a hospital every four years.Ī block down from the square, I find the office building (there is no company logo displayed) where I’m to teach my first private lesson to Andrey. He isn’t singing much.Ī pigeon lights on their empty collection box. One is on crutches, his leg lopped off at the knee. Two men in army uniforms stand in the square, singing for handouts. ![]() I climb out of the metro into an ash-gray March afternoon. A team of independent investigators claimed that the FSB used Chechen agent provocateurs to stage the attack, giving the government an excuse to kill ethnic Russians on a large scale.įour of the six members of that investigative team have been assassinated, including journalist Anna Politkovskaya and former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko. One might also recall the bungling of the 2002 Nord-Ost hostage crisis, in which a Federal Security Bureau SWAT team pumped poison gas into a Moscow theater, killing over 200 audience members and performers. Other police admit that the attacks could have been linked to turf wars between criminal gangs. Of the five post-Soviet metro bombings (the latest in 2004, on the track before Paveletskaya, a central stop I pass through four times a day), investigators say that the bombs’ wire fragments are typical of those used by Chechen terrorists. Perhaps her internal passport-one must carry it at all times-is not stamped “Moscow resident” and she can’t afford the bribe. What has this little woman done? Perhaps she is one of the estimated 3 million unregistered workers flooding the city to eke out a living from the oil trickle-down. We pale-skinned folk whisk onto the escalator, up to the light. Her eyes roll up in confusion at a militsioner in a platter-sized cap. In front of me, a tiny woman in slacks and a crisp jean jacket is yanked out. Fifty meters underground, in the shadows of Marxistskaya metro station, the police are picking out everyone with dark skin.
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