FFL emergency relief -- from Financial Times

May 2, 2005

Financial Times [London]

June 8, 1996, Saturday

SECTION: Pg. 3

LENGTH: 1129 words

HEADLINE: Perspectives: Bruised but not bowed

BYLINE: By CHRYSTIA FREELAND

... Russia), charges on a sliding scale, depending on the prosperity of

his customer. He tries to provide free copies for his poorest clients, the

elderly Russian residents of Grozny who, paradoxically, have been the chief

victims of the war.

Lacking the extensive clan networks which have helped their Chechen

neighbours to survive, ethnic Russians have been the hardest hit by a war

which is being waged to restore Moscow's control over the region. And while

the Kremlin has been willing to spend trillions of roubles on its soldiers,

only one Russian civic organisation has come to Chechnya to provide

emergency aid for its often homeless and sometimes starving compatriots -

the Russian branch of the Hare Krishnas.

'Our own Russian people forgot about us 100 years ago, we have no homes,

no pensions, nothing,' said Tamara Yadvichuk, a hunch-backed, gold-toothed

72-year-old babushka who shuffles to the abandoned school occupied by the

Krishnas every day to collect tea, bread, porridge and vegetable stew. 'I

thank God for these Krishnas, without them I would have starved. I have

even begun to recite the Krishna prayer when I wake up in the morning and

when I walk down the street. It just comes into my head: Hare, Hare, Hare

Krishna . . .'

But while the ravages of war have turned the Russian grandmothers of

Grozny to the gods of the east, superstitious Chechens are looking to a

different saviour. On our ride back down from the mountains, it was

Nunayev's turn to make small talk, and he entertained me with a prophecy

familiar to every Chechen.

Several years before the war began, a Chechen holy man predicted that a

long and terrible battle between Chechnya and Moscow would soon erupt. Then,

after 15 years of fighting, the...

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