"Even back during the First Chechen Campaign, it was very common for the enemy to have the same equipment as us, even the latest models produced in Russia – which, for our army, were still considered experimental prototypes and thus were barely in circulation – sometimes ended up in their hands. The Russian politicians of the time – led by that ‘stupid drunk Yeltsin’, as Nosov always called him, ‘who sold out to the United States of America’ – needed, according to our Captain, a black hole, a place that swallowed money and spat it out clean, supporting their so-called ‘democratic’ regime, which was run the American way – that is, with wars, lies, illicit trade and total lack of respect for the people of the Russian Federation. That black hole was Chechnya. ‘The Americans gave Yeltsin and his men a huge helping hand – they were able to control the whole orchestration of this disgusting war,’ Nosov vented for the thousandth time while we were on our way to base in the helicopter. ‘Who knows how much fun the strategists at the Pentagon had when they came up with this foul plan of local war right within the borders of their old enemy, the USSR... And through misinformation, political and ethnic agitation, they provoked us like a bunch of war dogs, straining at the leash.’ Essentially, their tactics were analogous to raping a dead body. It wasn’t enough for them to kill the ‘Soviet bloc’ – they still wanted to satisfy their sick thirst for dominion somehow, and to our shame there wasn’t anyone in Russia capable of stopping them..."