We stood in front of the car with vehicles the size of houses thundering past on either side. So when our car conked out at Friday lunchtime at this particular place in the metropolis, it seemed entirely of a piece with the week we’d dreamt.Due to the geography of Moorgate, we found ourselves pushing the car into the middle of the road because, oddly, that was the only place where we were out of everybody’s way.By the time we’d achieved this, though, I was shaking and the shirt was sticking to my back. For days now, Hannah and I had each been enduring nightly cycles of bad dreams. I don’t know if that is a September, beginning-of-term thing, but sure enough each morning has seen us lying in stiff-faced trauma, coming slowly to terms with the terrible happenings of our sleep.

Approaching one of the busiest junctions in the City of London, we drew to a halt, but with no electrical power to aid steering or braking – and no hazard lights to say “we’ve broken down” to the people behind.
It had been a week of nightmares, quite apart from the unremitting ghastliness of the news. “This,” I could hear myself saying breezily to my wife Hannah, “is actually the worst possible place we could break down.” And so it surely was. The Russian President and his government of hardliners must understand that in the wake of disaster what people demand, more than anything else, is true leadership.. The only way to achieve this goal is to work towards a political solution to the problem of Chechnya. President Putin spoke of his desire to strengthen the unity of the country in the wake of this atrocity. To do so would invite more destruction.But the painful truth is that unless Russia ceases to brutalise Chechnya, that infected wound on the body of the Russian Federation, the terrorist attacks will surely continue. This will mean more pain for the people of Chechnya and Russia alike.

No state can be seen to change its policies as a direct response to the actions of a few murderous fanatics. This was obviously a way of informing Chechen separatists that the events of the last week have done nothing to further their cause and that the Russian state will not give in to terrorism The sentiment is understandable. But equally important to him seems to be the need to “preserve the core of the colossus which was the Soviet Union”, as he put it in his speech.Most significantly of all, Chechnya was not mentioned once by President Putin. For President Putin, it is expedient to classify his internal problems as part of the global war on terror, since this acquires him the support of the United States. He claimed that Russia “showed weakness, and the weak are trampled upon”, and that “some want to cut off a juicy morsel from us while others are helping them”, referring to the independence movements in the Caucusus and elsewhere. But the Russian President’s record suggests there might well be a draconian clampdown on the civil liberties, and even human rights, of all the peoples of the Caucasus in the name of making them safe from terrorists.There was also an alarming sense of post-Soviet paranoia in President Putin’s speech.