A Soldier's Tale of Fear and Loathing

Worse than Iraq....me thinks so.

"'Permanent bases in Chechnya are even worse than prisons. They are surrounded by three rows of barbed wire, trenches and a mine field, and the soldiers have nowhere to go. They are surrounded by enemy territory,' said Ida Kuklina of the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers.
'Soldiers from normal army bases can go outside the base for a breath of fresh air, or to see girls. But in Chechnya the only time they can get away from their terrible officers is when they are on operations in enemy territory. It's like living on an island.'
The same day Dmitry spoke to a reporter, he had led a search party outside the base to find a conscript who had abandoned his post with a rifle the night before.
'We didn't find anything,' he said. 'But sometimes you find them dead, or sometimes the Chechen police find them and give them back for a ransom.'"