The Berlin I once knew was not the kind of place you raved about. There was no fine dining but plenty of heavy drinking. The beautiful people ran London and Munich and Milan. In Berlin, the punks were in charge.

By denouncing the war in Ukraine, Boris Nemtsov inspired the same hatred as Andrei Sakharov had by opposing the invasion of Afghanistan.

“When we passed their second checkpoint, they started shooting at us like in a shooting gallery,” Yuriy Bereza recalled. “It was an ambush.”

During NATO airstrikes, Serbian forces raged through the city, expelling Albanians and torching their homes. Today, only women and children venture to the Serb side of the river.

“When we were fighting the Russians, it was to the Americans’ advantage to help us,” says Commander Masood. “But when the Soviets were destroyed, they forgot about us.”