Just why are Russian soldiers so brutal?

LONG READ/FEATURE

A short clip from the documentary film ‘Intercepted’ about the Ukrainian war.

As talk of a possible peace deal in Ukraine gathers momentum one of the sticking points will be Kyiv's demands that Russian war criminals be tried. President Vladimir Putin, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court, will doubtless demand impunity for himself and his soldiers.

But one question that haunts me - and others who have lived in Russia, and got to know, and even love, the country - is: just why are Russian soldiers so incredibly brutal? And what does this say about the culture of Moscow's military - and even Russian society at large?

It makes for haunting viewing.

A Russian soldier, almost certainly a 32-year-old father-of-two-daughters called Oleg Yakovlev from the city of Saratov, shouts 'Film me! Film me!' as a Ukrainian captive, one of six who have surrendered, walks slowly away from him.

As a member of his squad films Yakovlev raises his Kalashnikov assault rifle and riddles the unarmed Ukrainian with bullets. Another Russian soldier shouts at him: "Leave one for me!"

The film is just one incident in a documentary put together by the FT and their Kyiv correspondent Christopher Miller. According to officials it is only one of 59 documented cases where Russian soldiers have executed 201 Ukrainian captives.

Although drones and phones are capturing more evidence than ever before of war crimes as they are committed, what is recorded on camera is almost certainly only the tip of the iceberg.

As a long-time Russia-watcher who lived in Moscow in the 2000s and covered Putin's early years in the Kremlin, the Russians' penchant for extreme brutality has long intrigued and disgusted me.

During my time in Russia I spent more than a week on assignment with special forces - the storied spetsnaz - outside the Chechen capital Grozny, and also watched them in action at some of the major terrorist attacks of the time.

I also travelled secretly to Chechnya - it was classed as an 'anti-terrorist zone' at the time - to interview some of the families of the victims of the Russians. I listened to accounts of torture, kidnappings and killings from terrified Chechen civilians, most of them women.

I still have vivid memories of an interview I made in 2004 after Milana Ozdoyeva, whose husband had already been tortured and killed by the FSB, was abducted. As her children played on the floor around me, her mother described how she was taken away. She was never seen again.

Moscow didn't want such stories coming out, of course. After one reporting visit to the north Caucasus the local FSB - Russia's security police - took my translator into custody and put cigarettes out on her arm. (She later emigrated to the US.)

Another time someone opened fire on a car sent to pick me up. I first thought this was a coincidence - Chechnya was notoriously violent in those days - but it turned out the FSB knew all about the shooting. I found that out when I was 'invited' for an interview in the Lubyanka, the infamous former KGB headquarters in central Moscow.

I never got to the bottom of who opened fire on the car or why. But memories from my Chechen trips often come back to me as I watch the evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine emerge: mass graves, summary executions, torture, and sexual violence.

Of course the roots of Russian military brutality run deep. During World War II, the Red Army earned a reputation for its harsh treatment of both enemies and civilians. As Soviet soldiers advanced through Eastern Europe, they left a trail of destruction, including widespread rape and looting.

Stalin once infamously suggested that rape was a reward for Soviet soldiers liberating eastern Europe from the Nazis. In cities from Berlin to Budapest hundreds of thousands of women were raped.

Nor is brutality in the Russian military confined to the battlefield. It is also deeply ingrained in its internal culture, particularly through the practice of dedovshchina - the institutionalized hazing and bullying of young recruits.

Dedovshchina, which translates roughly as the 'rule of the grandfathers,' has its roots in the Tsarist era when officers would drive new recruits around like beasts, flaying them with whips.

In the days when Soviet military service was two full years and there was a fresh intake of recruits each six months, it came to refer to the custom by which those in the last half-year would abuse and haze those who had just arrived.

But it worsened considerably after military reforms in 1967, which allowed men with criminal records to join the army to bolster its numbers. The criminals brought their prison behaviour and even their lingo with them.

Whereas, until then, beatings and hazing had been widespread, the criminals introduced other predatory practices such as pimping out conscripts for their labour to local farmers and workshops and then stealing their salaries.

Some recruits were even sent home and told to return every month with a monthly pay packet for the deds or grandfathers.

Monitoring the abuse, was, of course difficult and statistics are patchy. But in 1993 alone, 169 soldiers were reported to have died as a result of hazing in the Russian army. An NGO, set up by the mothers of Russian soldiers, reported that 44 percent of conscript deaths in the military were from suicide.

One particularly harrowing case occurred on New Year’s Eve 2006, when Private Andrey Sychyov was beaten for hours by fellow soldiers. Sychyov was then forced to squat in the cold and later developed gangrene. When he was finally allowed to seek medical care doctors were forced to amputate his genitals and lower limbs.

Another infamous example was that of Private Artyom Pakhotin, who had the Russian word for “cock” carved into his forehead as punishment for smoking an illicit cigarette. Two weeks later, on April 19, 2018, Pakhotin shot himself during his platoon’s drill training session.

“Mom, don’t believe what anyone tells you," he said in his last text message. "They’re bullying me here, exhausting me psychologically and extorting money … I don’t see how I can go on. I’m already very tired. I’m sorry it all turned out like this.”

In November 2019, a 20-year-old Russian conscript gunned down eight of his fellow soldiers, citing relentless bullying and a rape threat as his reasons. “I regret I couldn’t restrain myself,” he wrote in an open letter. “But I had no other way out.”

Russian special forces, or spetsnaz, are often portrayed as elite units, but their methods are also brutal.

During my time in Grozny with them the soldiers told me of a zindan they used - a hole in the ground - where they would keep a prisoner. After days or weeks of torturing him, they said, he would eventually be killed.

“Interrogation is not something you are taught,” one of the officers in Chechnya told me. “It’s something you learn.”

When Moscow launched its full-scale attack on Ukraine in Feb 2022, this culture of Russian military violence was given a whole new canvas.

In the Kyiv region alone, Ukrainian authorities and international organizations discovered over 1,100 civilian bodies, at least 458 in the suburb of Bucha. Many were found with hands tied behind their backs. Others bore signs of severe torture, broken bones, burn marks, and mutilations.

After Bucha, the International Criminal Court began gathering evidence to prosecute those responsible. In April 2023, the ICC issued arrest warrants for several Russian officers suspected of orchestrating these atrocities.

Evidence has continued to mount. A documentary film called Intercepted provides a rare and chilling glimpse into the mindset of Russian soldiers in Ukraine. The film overlays footage of daily life in war-torn Ukraine with intercepted phone calls between Russian soldiers and their families back home.

In one scene, a soldier casually remarks: “Of course we had to kill all the civilians - they might have given our positions away.”

In another, a soldier brags about stealing a pair of New Balance trainers. His wife seems pleased and urges him to try and steal a computer as well for their daughter who will soon be starting school.

Yet another soldier says: “We’re catching a lot of Nazis here. We caught and killed three little ones this morning.” It is unclear whether he is referring to children.

Torture, it is clear, has become quotidian and some of the Russian soldiers describe horrific methods. One, they call “21 roses,” involves slicing off a prisoner’s fingers, toes and penis with a knife and then watching the skin slide back over the muscle.

Another Russian describes how he 'broke every bone' in the body of a defiant Ukrainian. Yet another recounts the beating of an old man with batons until he finally died.

One of the most shocking elements of the film is the reaction of the soldiers’ womenfolk back home. When a soldier describes shooting a mother in front of her children, his partner responds, “Of course, she is an enemy too.”

Another woman urges her husband to “turn them into kebabs.”

Despite the overwhelming evidence of war crimes, there has been almost no accountability. By the end of the Soviet-Afghan War in 1989, 2,500 Soviet soldiers had been jailed by Soviet authorities and 200 had been convicted of premeditated murder.

But, so far, in the Ukraine war, there has been a culture of impunity. Indeed Putin has praised Russian soldiers in Bucha as heroes and given them awards.

Latest reports suggest that at least some of the Ukrainian units still fighting in the Kursk enclave are now surrounded. This week Putin urged them to surrender. Some, by all accounts, already have.

It is chilling to think, even as suited envoys fly between high level meetings in Moscow, Washington and Riyadh, what the Russians are doing to those Ukrainian captives.

I discuss the issue of Russian military brutality with Patrick Bishop and Saul David in a new series for the 'Battleground' podcast due to come out in the next week. I will keep you all updated. You can subscribe to the podcast here. (Click here for Apple Podcasts version of Battleground, and here for Spotify version).