Grozny!

This is coolbert:

"'There is peace. We have a new airport. People are satisfied'"

Here with some images of Grozny as sections of the city appear in the aftermath of the First [1994] and Second Chechen [2000] Wars.

Grozny at one time a city of about a half-million persons laid waste to a large extent, so intense and horrific was the fighting in and around the city, that combination of modern explosive weaponry and ruthless tactics destructive in the extreme!

"In 1994, Grozny had 490,000 inhabitants, some 90 square miles including the suburbs . . . The city has [had] a mixture of concrete buildings ranging from 3- to 15-story structures and 123 roads led in and out of Grozny. Pictures of pre-war Grozny show a spacious, modern and green city. Numerous parks, the river, and mild weather made the city one of Soviet Russia’s nicer, warmer cities to visit. Today, Grozny is terrible. An alien wasteland of a destroyed concrete jungle."

NONE can deny that these images speak for themselves! NOT IN A FIFTY YEAR PERIOD HAS ANY EUROPEAN CITY SEEN SUCH DEVASTATION AS WROUGHT BY WAR!! SCENES AS YOU MIGHT HAVE SEEN AT STALINGRAD [1942] OR BERLIN [1945]!!

I recall seeing this image some years ago now in the National Geographic magazine. This is a Russian dispensary? Consisting of the table, chairs, the two medical personnel and that is that?

Most of what you see here is the result of the Second Chechen War [2000]. The Russians employing massed heavy artillery, aerial bombardment, concentrated rocket and missile fire, big-bore direct gun fire from tanks and tube anti-tank artillery! The Russian also not hesitant to use all manner of fuel-air-explosive and thermobaric bombs! Kaboom! Cracking the egg with the proverbial sledgehammer. And the results show!!

See a more complete collection of images in this photo album thanks to Roy Conrad: "GROZNY IN THE WAR AND AFTER IT"

"The once war-torn country has been transformed, but change has come at a price"

OH - - surely that is so! Even discernible to the most casual of observers, if with just a single glance!

P.S. For some reason this particular blog entry has had tens of thousands of "hits", astronomically high! Devoted readers to the blog and others merely touching bases will also want to see further Chechen wars photo-journalistic style entries here, here, and here.

coolbert.