Bloomberg describes that the return of Wagner recruits to Russia has shocked city and village residents. They discover that men they thought were serving long prison sentences are living among them again. Among those pardoned were people convicted of murder and even cannibalism. __ The Return: A Crime Wave
This is not the big crime wave that everyone expects. The greatest bulk of the coming crime wave in Russia must wait for the large-scale demobilization of troops after large scale fighting ends. But as Russian men continue to serve out their terms and return to the cities of Russia, they will bring with them their new and pre-existing dysfunctions.
Some of the returning criminals were criminals before they went to fight in Ukraine. But many of them learned to rape, murder, and prey on the weak and helpless from their fellow soldiers while invading and pillaging a neighboring country.
Anna Boltynyuk, from the Kaluga region of central Russia, lost her 18-year-old daughter Yana when she was raped and murdered in 2014. Now the man responsible has been freed after serving just three years of his sentence, following a campaign by the Kremlin to persuade convicts to fight in Russia’s war in Ukraine in exchange for a presidential pardon.
The murderer, Evgeny Tatarintsev, disappeared last year from a prison colony reportedly visited in person by Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in his drive to recruit men to join the paramilitary group. Boltynyuk made numerous appeals to the federal prison system to find out where he was, and was finally told he had been pardoned.
“Tatarintsev is roaming free,” Boltynyuk told the Financial Times. “I am going to my daughter’s grave, while he is going to a barbecue with his friends.” Tatarintsev is among thousands of prisoners who took up the offer of a pardon in exchange for serving on the battlefield in Ukraine. Most joined the war with Wagner, but others are now joining separate defence ministry-sponsored groups to boost numbers for Russia’s full-scale invasion. Now a growing number are returning home. __ FT
Russia’s largest cities have avoided most of the traumatic backlash from Putin’s war. But the clock is ticking, and no part of Russia will escape the blowback.
In prison, “they are treated like ‘we are nothing,’ then it all gets even worse at the front,” said Kazan-based sociologist Iskender Yasaveev. “The experience they return with is a trauma that will manifest itself for decades.”
Sociologists have long noted that crime levels often surge following the end of military conflicts, and researchers have looked at many possible causes for this from social disruption to trauma faced by soldiers. Russia is unlikely to buck that trend after Putin ordered the February 2022 invasion that triggered Europe’s largest conflict since World War II. The return of prisoners who fought for Wagner is offering an early signal of what may lie in store once hundreds of thousands of men brutalized by the fighting return to civilian life.
While lower-level crimes fell, the number of murders and sex offenses, particularly against children, hasn’t declined in the past two years. Indecent assault against minors surged by 62% compared to the prewar period, according to Bloomberg calculations based on Supreme Court data.
The return of Wagner recruits to Russia has proved a shock to residents of cities and villages who discover men they thought were serving long jail terms living among them. People convicted of murder, and even cannibalism, have been among those pardoned. __ Fortune
Crime exists innately within the Russian national psychology. Putin’s invading force is guilty of thousands of war crimes within Ukraine. Crime is second nature to the troops of the Kremlin.
… the country is now dominated by corrupt oligarchs, gangsters and self-serving government officials. __ A Problem of Criminal Corruption
Russia has used lethal poison gas against Ukraine for the entire 2022 war, sometimes including the Novichok nerve gas. It started out with one use early on, during the siege of Mariupol, became sporadic for most of the war and suddenly became constant (100+ per month) starting in April 2024. The use of nerve agents increased too, but how much is not clear. The only consistent items in every use are that all were delivered by UAVs and drones on Ukrainian forward areas, and all involved the forbidden agent Chloropicrin, which is principally an irritant that is lethal in higher doses. Chloropicrin is used by itself or in conjunction with more lethal agents. On May 1 the US Department of State “made a determination under the CBW Act that Russia has used the chemical weapon chloropicrin against Ukrainian forces in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).”
Chloropicrin is most effectively used as an enhancer for more dangerous gases in that it makes victims gasp for breath, and so leads them to inhale more of any really lethal war gases delivered soon afterwards. The element which makes Chloropicrin so effective is that it has a two-hour delayed effect so victims are rarely aware that they have been exposed to it. That makes later delivery of more lethal agents much more effective because victims are then unable to don gas masks. And the Chloropicrin is disabling by itself as well as lethal in strong concentrations. It might be cheaper than more lethal agents. __ Strategy Page
One cannot expect those troops who were immersed in a great bloody bath of top-down criminality directed by their own superiors and government officials, to return home free of the brutal taint, ready to live free and peaceful lives. Even those who were not thugs before, will find it difficult to integrate into a peaceful community when they return.
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