Putin is there. Casualties and blood are shown on our television screens, but it is better not to listen to the commentary: there is very little sympathy and a lot of malicious satisfaction. It is as if we are pleased that the British are suffering the same as we do. They are particularly careful to insinuate that Great Britain is now prepared to extradite Akhmed Zakaev to Russia, although the British government has said nothing of the sort.What is it with us? We are always ready to exult at the suffering of others, and never prepared to be kind. Throughout the world we are held to be good, fair people. I have no sense of that at present.In Moscow, the Heroes continue their hunger strike, but not one television channel reports the fact.Marina Khodorkovskaya, the mother of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, has delivered to our Novaya Gazeta an open letter to the cosmonaut Georgii Grechko, who has signed a notorious open letter of fifty actors, writers, producers, and cosmonauts—people well known throughout Russia.
