On August 18th-21st a group of politicians, researchers, journalists and bloggers from Poland, Germany and Italy traveled to Chechnya. The tour was organized by the Russian-Polish Center for Dialogue and Harmony.
"I was surprised to see what level there is in Grozny and throughout Chechnya. I have been engaged in questions of geopolitics for a long time and remember post-war Grozny. It was like Stalingrad. Today's level of development and prosperity seems to me incredible. It's a miracle. I think Moscow went the right way by stabilizing the country through economic assistance, through the organization of normal living conditions. This means peace and stability. This is a very good direction, which it is now necessary to continue,’’ the senior researcher at the Institute for Geopolitical Studies and Allied Sciences (IsAG), Eliseo Bertolasi, said.
"Unfortunately, in Europe Chechnya is represented as an ‘axis of evil’. We had a great opportunity to admire thid wonderful, beautiful country, its hospitality. We're going back to Europe with a message that Chechnya is remarkable, despite the negative information field formed around the North Caucasus region. We hope that this visit will be the start of new relationships between the countries, a new attitude toward Chechnya as a promising region, including in the tourism sector. Many thanks for a great opportunity to see those things, about which the media are silent in the West,’’ the director of the German Center for Eurasian Studies, Manuel Ochsenreiter, said
"Our goal was to see the present-day reality of the Chechen Republic. At the time, the media was writing a lot about what was happening in Chechnya, mostly negative. And once the development of Chechnya started, the republic dropped out of the news. In my view, this is unfair. It was necessary to see how everything happens in reality. We traveled around half of the country. It seemed to me that I was in Sharjah, where everybody speaks Russian. The center of Grozny is magnificently restored, and as we drove around the country, we did not see any traces of the past [military] campaign,’’ Yuri Bondarenko, the director of the fund ‘Russian-Polish Center of Dialogue and Agreement’’ and organizer of the trip said.
