UR TV CAST

Sure, Luisa, the daughter, lost the popular city-centre cafe into which she had sunk the family savings. Sure, 14 people in this block lost their lives in the shelling. And Aslambek, the elder son, was badly injured by a shell fragment: it is still unclear whether his eye is operable.By Grozny standards, though, all that counts as good fortune. None of the houses in this courtyard was completely destroyed Fourteen is a tiny number to have died.

And the Russians did not come shooting into the cellar, in which 108 people – Chechens and Russians together – were huddled. Instead, a little boy and his father went to fetch the Russians to show them where they were hiding, and to persuade them not to shoot.Mahomed, the 23-year-old younger son, remembers: “The two Russians seemed so frightened. We fed them, and gave one of them a new pair of shoes – his shoes had fallen apart They were very afraid. They held their guns up all the time they were eating.” As the soldier gazed at the old and young crowded into the cellar he told Mahomed: “We were told that there were no civilians in the city.”This, then, counts as luck: to be alive, when tens of thousands are not; to have a home, even if part of it is destroyed; to be able to eat, drink and talk, on a summer’s evening.The city is no longer especially dangerous – though it gets creepy as curfew approaches. Grozny, the capital of the would-be breakaway republic of Chechnya, now stands as a monstrous and unhappy pile of destruction.
Here at No 16 Victory Avenue, the family with whom I am staying consider themselves lucky. Or you can move out of the courtyard (before the 9pm curfew) and behold the scene of destruction that once shocked the world – so long ago, at the beginning of the year Ruins, ruins, and more ruins. Outside in the courtyard old men sit playing chess.

Beneath the balconies teenagers play table tennis (with a line of bricks for a net). In front of their houses people sit chatting and laughing till late A southern summer’s evening of perfect tranquillity. Just occasionally there is a burst of shooting to remind you that the reality of Grozny is different. “We’re ready to move to either test site,” he said.The Federated States of Micronesia yesterday joined Australia, Western Samoa and the Marshall Islands in the case which New Zealand launched last week in the International Court to stop France conducting nuclear tests in the Pacific.. That test, he suggested, could be a high-yield explosion and may have to be held at Fangataufa because of damage to Mururoa. For the second night running, the Rainbow Warrior circled Mururoa and Fangataufa, with the French navy frigate Prairial tailing it.”Our objective is to stop the first test,” Thomas Schultz, the nuclear campaign co-ordinator of Greenpeace International said. The calm of the lagoon where Mr de Peretti swam will be shatteredvery soon – any time after tomorrow – when France resumes nuclear testing with plans for seven or eight underground explosions.