Anu Lenkvist: book "The Colour of War" shows the war in Chechnya by eyes of Russian soldiers

People in Finland known little about what is happening in Chechnya; and the book by Arkadi Babchenko, a journalist and a veteran of the Chechen warfare, "The Colour of War" fills the gap in knowledge, said Anu Lenkvist, translator of the book into Finnish. The interests of residents of Finland to the conflict in Northern Caucasus as a whole is great, says rights defender Oksana Chelysheva.

Oksana Chelysheva, a human rights defender, a journalist and deputy head of the Finnish organization "Society for Russian-Chechen Friendship", who was also present at presentation of the book in Helsinki, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that the interest in Finland residents to books of the authors writing about the war is very great, especially of those who write about the war in Northern Caucasus.

"The Finns themselves have noted that the publication of this book in the Finnish language is a reason for the Finnish media to start talking about this problem again and deeper than before," said Ms Chelysheva.

"When a man gets to war, he finds himself in a totally different world. His human mind and heart change, same as his paradigms," the Finnish edition Verkkolehti quoted Arkadi Babchenko's words at the press conference in Helsinki. "When I returned to Moscow after the first war, I couldn't understand the normal life around. I wanted to go back to war. This is a common problem - soldiers, who return from war, fail to find their place in normal life, while Russia just lacks any rehabilitation programmes for former soldiers," he said.

"When I was translating Arkadi's book into Finnish, I got answers to the questions that haunted me when I read war news from Chechnya: why soldiers were selling ammo to the enemy, it is somehow illogical? Where the monsters like Budanov come from? I think the book is not only interesting but also useful. We are your neighbours; quite a lot was written here about the two Chechen wars; about problems of the Russian Army. However, we know virtually nothing about realities of army life and about those wars from the soldiers," Anu Lenkvist told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.