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fullscreen This image, distributed by Russia’s Ministry of Defense, shows Russian soldiers in an armored vehicle in Ukraine. Archive image. Photo: Dispatch From Russia’s Military, Via AP/TT
Russian men returning from the war in Ukraine are guilty of numerous violent crimes in their homeland.
So far, it is about more than 100 crimes where someone has been killed, according to a review. There are alarms about a wave of violence in close relationships.
In the course of the Ukraine war, there have been repeated reports of Russian soldiers who have been allowed to return home and who have then committed serious violent crimes, including several murders.
In at least 107 cases, Russian men who returned home from Ukraine have been guilty of crimes where they caused the death of another person, according to the independent Russian news site Vjorstka, which has reviewed court documents.
Pardoned prisoners
It is about regular murder, manslaughter and other criminal classifications such as causing bodily harm and traffic offences. The review has uncovered more than 200 statutory crimes of violence, which in many cases have been directed against relatives.
Added to the review is a note that there are additional cases where the culprit could not be formally linked to service in the war, but where there is much evidence that it has been there.
In just over 90 cases, it is about people recruited for the war from Russian prisons, which the paramilitary Wagner group and later the army have done in large campaigns, against promises of release.
Murdered again
In a number of high-profile cases, pardoned murderers have committed new murders.
A man was in prison in the Siberian sub-republic of Sacha, convicted of stabbing a female acquaintance in 2020. He took up the army’s offer and returned home a free man after a few months of service in the “military special operation”, which, among other things, The New The York Times has reported on.
In February, the man walked around his hometown of Kutana heavily drunk and complained loudly that people did not show him enough respect as a war veteran. The next day he beat a friend to death with a crowbar and then his own aunt with an axe, after which he set her house on fire.
Free women abusers
A Russian woman with whom the news agency AFP has spoken says that her husband was a violent alcoholic even before he enlisted. When he returned after seven months in Ukraine as a lauded war hero, he was even more menacing.
– “I will cut your throat and hands off and flog you. I will burn you with acid,” the woman recounts her husband’s threat.
Women’s rights organizations in Russia sound the alarm about a wave of violence in close relationships as a result of the war. Many are also said to have been pardoned after being jailed for previous convictions for violence against women.
THE FACTS Tens of thousands dead
At least 50,471 Russian soldiers have died in the war in Ukraine so far, according to an ongoing review conducted by the independent Russian news site Mediazona together with the British BBC.
The real number is apparently considerably higher – but no reliable Russian statistics are available.
The deaths included are those that could be fully confirmed using open source data: relatives’ social media posts, local media reports, insurance statements or actual grave sites in cemeteries in Russia.
The review was last updated on March 29.
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