“What is there to get back to?” asks Satsita Taramova , a mother of many children. “Speaking for myself, my house in the Oktyabrski district in Grozny is totally destroyed and right now I am in no position to rebuild it. The possibility of finding another home is unrealistic. Officials promise that new housing projects will be built in Chechnya but I don’t want to be a refugee in my own country. Once the government places people in these ghettos, it will simply forget about us, considering the problem solved. I am afraid to take my children home. My elder son is only 18 but the federals see him as a potential rebel already, and the fighters – as a fresh cannon fodder,” says the Chechen woman.

Ilyas Magomedov – unemployed: “I won’t let my family go back. The apartment house where we used to live was not included in the reconstruction plans. New housing is a non-existing issue in the republic. Those cosmetic improvements on the face of the war-torn capital in the form of reconstruction work on several buildings do not solve the global problem of securing accommodation for the returnees. I’ve heard plenty of stories about the conveniences of communal houses – one toilet for hundreds of people, a lack of the very basic sewerage facility, no heat and most of all, people’s vulnerability to willfulness of the federal soldiers. Even though such conditions exist here as well, I don’t have to worry about bombs falling on my tent or soldiers bursting in on me in the guise of another mopping-up operation.”

Asma Aydamirova: “Six months ago I decided to return home. It's bad. I managed to poorly repair the two rooms that stayed relatively preserved in the house and settled there hoping for a better future. But then I was confronted with the problem of what to live on. With a catastrophic deficit of jobs in the republic, people have only two means of earning bread: women engage in trade and men who have contacts go work for law enforcement agencies. I would not call the existence that my family and I dragged along as a life. Never-ending fear for the fate of my dear ones drove me to a heart-attack condition. That’s way I had to come back here – in a critical situation I couldn’t receive medical help because the life in Grozny starts pulsing only after dawn.”