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“What, in your view, should be the mechanism for a ceasefire?” the Chechens asked.

“That is for the Working Group to decide,” the Mothers replied.

“But the Working Group cannot work while the war is continuing,” one Mother said doubtfully. “We need a ceasefire. That is the main thing.”

“That is a matter for the Working Group, not us,” other Mothers corrected her.

“We would like to propose two groups of delegates, one from each side, to establish their own ideas about the mechanism for a ceasefire, and then to bring them together.”

“No. Only a Multi-Lateral Working Group with everybody in it. With third-party observers.”

It was fairly pointless trying to discuss anything, and that looked decidedly odd. They had been moving towards this meeting for such a long time, and had presumably been preparing for it. Alas, I cannot write in detail about what was discussed at the Waldorf Hotel. The Mothers insisted I should convey only the gist, which I now do because it is particularly important for anybody who had high hopes for peace resulting from this meeting. The gist was that all proposals from the Chechen side were rejected. Not one made it into the final memorandum. As Ida Kuklina explained afterwards, “We will take them back with us and consider them.”

“And what action will you take?” Novaya gazeta asked.

“I don’t know,” Ida Kuklina replied.

“Why do you keep going on at us?” Valentina Melnikova added. “We are ill old-age pensioners.”

“So as to be able to write about this.”

“Write anything you like.”

This too seemed very odd. What had been the point of seeking this meeting if there was no sense of urgency? They had evidently come to London for some other purpose.

In fact, at the Waldorf Hotel flaccidity alternated with bursts of hyperactivity. “We cannot wait for Russian society to reach a consensus,” the Mothers declared. “We have been at the forefront for the past 16 years. We do not wait, we act as the situation requires. The only place where people can come for help is to the Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers.” That is an exaggeration. They are not by any means the only place people can go, even in Moscow. It was followed, however, by a truly absurd exaggeration: “The generals will do what we tell them to.”

The Chechens were amazed. In that case, why had they not told them to stop the war long ago? Or was that not what they meant?

Zakayev’s group tried consistently to hurry the Mothers along. They tried to persuade them of the need for momentum. Time was not on our side: they explained that radicalism in their ranks was increasing, which it might soon no longer be possible to contain. The overall situation in the North Caucasus was highly volatile. The Mothers, however, were not budging. One thing at a time. “People are expecting a miracle from us, but there is not going to be one.” We heard that repeated again and again.

The Mothers’ belief that taking things slowly was a fundamental principle of popular diplomacy was supported by the observers from European institutions: “We are prepared to provide a venue for further meetings with the same participants somewhere in Strasbourg or Brussels, and we will continue the dialogue.” The European representatives who had flown in specially to London were Vytautas Landsbergis, the former President of Lithuania and today a Member of the European Parliament; and his Belgian colleague Bart Staes. Later, on February 25, they were joined by Andreas Gross, a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE); Lord Judd, former rapporteur to PACE on Chechnya, and Baroness Sarah Ludford, the main organiser of these Chechen–Russian meetings in London.

They broke up on February 24, having agreed the draft text of a joint London Memorandum which acknowledged the thousands of victims and the fact that the conflict cannot be resolved by military means.

* * *

Queen Anne’s Gate is the name of a London street near St James’s Park and here, on the morning of February 25, the parties met in the