The rape complaint was registered on May 20 in a police station in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk. A few hours later, the police discovered that a man in camouflage had taken two girls into a garage, threatening to use a pistol and a grenade if they alerted passers-by. The man in his thirties, who was returning from the front, was arrested, while the two young girls were prescribed a forensic examination. The authorities having ceased all communication on this file, the media which revealed the information, NGS, could not obtain more details. But in the local Russian press, such miscellaneous facts featuring men who have returned from Ukraine are multiplying.
On March 29, a murder shocked the entire Kirov region, located 800 kilometers northeast of Moscow. 28-year-old Ivan Rossomakhin murdered a grandmother from the town of Vyatskiye Poliani. Returning from Donbass, where he had served in Wagner, Yevgeny Prigojine’s group of mercenaries, Rossomakhin, unable to adapt to civilian life, was left alone with his traumas in his native village. A few days before taking action, the former prisoner, heavily alcoholic, spent his days degrading cars and threatening passers-by with death with an ax and a knife. Local television had described him as someone “who made his village live in fear”. The situation quickly escalated to the ears of the police. “He was a problematic person,” confirmed Vadim Varankin, the municipal police chief, after the tragedy.
After long negotiations with the authorities, Ivan Rossomakhin had agreed to go to the neighboring town. He who couldn’t stand a life in peace, his head full of the horrors of war, had just signed a new contract with Wagner. He had a month of vacation left before returning to the hell of the front. The month too many. This March 29, therefore, he went to an 85-year-old lady from Viatskiye Poliani, beat and stabbed her before denouncing himself to the police.
Recruited in prison following a first murder, the man should not however fear much of his next condemnation. What does he risk, if not… to go back to the front, once his judgment has been pronounced? “Of the thousands of prisoners who have been released from prison [NDLR : pour intégrer la milice Wagner]there were only 20 crimes”, tried to justify Evgueni Prigojine, who opposes these dramas with an astonishing vision of things: “Thanks to the fact that these men are sent to fight, many of your children are not dead .” Implied, Wagner would have rid Russia of criminals. In his own conception of the death penalty, the leader of Wagner also confirmed that Ivan Rossomakhin will, in any case, be sent back to fight…
The specter of a “Ukrainian syndrome”
With each war – and Russia has known many – thousands of men are reintegrated overnight, with little or no psychological help, into a society maintained in extreme socio-economic dependence on the state, who made the choice to stay in poverty for political reasons. Each soldier returning from the front then becomes a time bomb that Russian society refuses to see. It is enough to take the night trains which come and go towards the south of Russia, near the Donbass, to observe the attitude of the soldiers on leave on one side, the attitude of the civilians on the other. The soldiers, who have sometimes spent many months without seeing a single civilian, are in lack of recognition. They try to approach other travellers, to seduce young women. But civilians are particularly suspicious of the idea of coming into contact with these men, who are thought to be all the more violent because they are often drunk. These thousands of men on leave, who generally pass through Moscow, the time of a transit, sometimes live very badly their return to real life. The capital, alive, where the spirits seem far from the war, where the terraces are crowded with people who do not want to hear about military things, represents a first shock, before that of the return to normal life. And all the more so for the soldiers who are not expected by anyone.
“On the front, the rotation of soldiers is not regular, so they cannot always rest, explains the specialist in defense issues at the Rand Corporation, in Washington, Dara Massicot. Exposed to stress, exhausted, they can feeling increasingly helpless and angry about their situation. Messages reaching us from the front suggest that some soldiers under contract will want to quit when the restrictions are lifted. But not all will be able to, especially for financial reasons. ” Those who return to civilian life will also have to manage post-traumatic stress. “As the ‘Afghan syndrome’ and the ‘Chechen syndrome’ affected veterans returning from these war zones, the emergence of a ‘Ukrainian syndrome’ is only a matter of time in Russia. And don’t forget not that most of the soldiers have not yet returned”, continues this researcher, who predicts that the Russian medical system will be unable to manage such an influx.
Already, Russian society is experiencing an increase in crime. In January-February 2023, the Russian Interior Ministry recorded a 14% increase in murders and attempted murders compared to the same period a year earlier. A first in twenty years. If the trend has yet to be confirmed, everything indicates that it is linked to the return of fighters. Thus, the regions that sent the most men into battle are the most affected by this increase. In the provinces of Belgorod, Kursk, Tambov or Buriatia, which have massively supplied the Russian army, homicides have increased by 25% to 50% since the start of the war. In the spring of 2022, the Russian psychologist and journalist in exile Viktor Lebedev had anticipated this increase in violence in the columns of the Moscow Times “The war will bring an increase in anxiety disorders, alcohol and drug use, suicides and psychotic disorders, he wrote. All of this will increase mortality and crime, which will complete the picture overview of the social crisis. As in the 1990s.”
And to remember that in countries that have experienced wars, the increase in violence within society was felt above all at the end of the conflict, when all the soldiers had returned. “I would not conclude that an explosion of violence has started. Let’s be honest, the level of violence in Russia has always been very high. But if we talk about a specific group, the soldiers, the situation is really dangerous The question now is how many of these people have already returned and how many more will return,” says the psychologist. Other indicators, such as the increase in domestic violence, consultations with psychologists and sales of antidepressants, show an increase in ill-being and stress. A generation will grow up without a father, in real conditions of poverty. At the same time, the militarization of society is increasing, it is now instilled in young children… starting in kindergarten.